Itachi:Familiar of Zero
by BackwardsHazard
Summary: Itachi succumbs to his sickness and dies in his battle with Sasuke. Now floating in a void he see's a strange symbol that brings him to the land of Tristain and finds himself as the familiar of a certain pink haired magi. Follow itachi and Louise as they show the world what it really means to be a zero. Itachi x Louise (Maybe) X harem. Humor, some romance and mature for language
1. Chapter 1

**_MAJOR EDIT: Apparently people didn't like Itachi how I portrayed him in this first chapter, well fine, I have rewritten the last half of the chapter to make it fit Itachi's style more and I hope to never piss of the legion again. I swear it's like 3 positive reviews, 10 slightly negative ones. and like 20 Strongly worded PM's Jesus people I didn't know Canon Itachi had this many worshipers, I will try and stay true to your one true god's personality, now stop yelling at me.  
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**_I am working on chapter 2 though so you can expect that soon, maybe later this week, so chill till then...please...  
_**

**_-ooo-_**

**_OKOKOKOKOK, this is an odd idea I know, but it's just something that's been eating at me for awhile now and my muse has been dragging me from my nice warm bed late at night and well into the morning for the last two days working on this thing._**

**_So tell me what you guys think about it, should I continue this or is this not worth the effort?_**

**_Fic of the day: Lover and Tormentor by Acaykath_**  
**_A very very DARK Naruto story, where Naruto accidentally destroys the leaf village when Akatsuki comes for him. Naruto has gone suicidal and only the Kyubi can fix it, but will she take advantage of him in the process? A godlike Naruto story with a bitter and angry Naruto for the first half and a very dark and cruel Naruto for the later half. The first in a possible series. Sequal tba._**

**_Word/s of the day: pseudonymous _**  
**_ a false or fictitious name._**  
**_ or written under a fictitious name._**  
**_Basically what 99.9% Of us are here on FF XD_**

**_Song/vid of the day: Touhou-Bad Apple (MMD) Little devil (copy paste into youtube :D)_**

_**Disclaimer: I dont own Naruto or Familiar of Zero, I don't make any money off it either.**_

**_-ooo-_**  
"Talking"  
_'Thinking'_  
**"Different Language"**  
Jutsu/magic spells

_**-ooo-**_  
_**Chapter 1: Ninja of Zero**_

A bloody battle of two brothers. The younger, tricked into hating the other. The Elder, not long for this world. Cursed with a wasting disease and taking medication to extend his tragic life just so his younger brother could clear their family name, to vindicate the elder brothers misdeeds.

Two brothers, two destiny's, one guaranteed outcome.

*Poke*

"Sorry Sasuke...This is it." Itachi smiled for the last time, taking his last breath as he gazed fondly into his little brothers frightened and confused eyes, knowing that his plan had worked, Sasuke had killed him through attrition, allowing his wasting disease to take hold and grant him the victory.

Now he could finally rest, now he could rest in peace.

The last thing he saw was the concrete wall, really the only shred of the building that they had fought in that was left standing. His face closing in.

He was dead before the dull thump of flesh rang out, leaving his younger brother all alone in the rain that soaked the both of them. Leaving him confused, tormented and without a goal.

But that is another story altogether, one that has been told time and time again. Let's take a step back and follow the elder brother down the rabbit hole this time and see where it leads us, shall we?

_**-ooo-**_

"What..." Itachi opened his eyes to stare into total blackness. With a slight twitch the Uchiha had righted himself from whatever cramped slouch he had found himself in, into what could only be described as a free fall through nothing.

"I see..." Itachi sighed. "My crimes were so great I was sent to neither heaven nor hell, I am bound in some form of purgatory then? ...Cursed to ever wander an endless void?" Itachi's eyes closed for a minute taking in what he thought was his never ending solitude when a warm feeling started creeping up his bones, like he had just stuck his feet into a warm bath.

Opening his eyes, he was met with a curious sight. A strange symbol hanging in the void. It looked something like fuinjutsu but the 21 year old Uchiha was neither a practitioner nor an expert in the field so he couldn't say if it was a seal or not. What he did know though was that it seemed as if the symbol was...drawing him towards it and it felt as if something was calling to him.

Curious, the man sped up his fall, how that was possible in this inky blackness he'd never know but after only a moment's more free fall he crossed the symbol, and then his world was immediately rocked by an explosion.

_**-ooo-**_

"Hmm let's see." The voice of an elderly man mused, as he stared at the courtyard around him, which was filled with all manner of beasts and creatures, and at their side was each a human, their master. "Has anyone not done the ritual yet?" He asked the students around him.

"Louise hasn't!" A sultry busty woman replied, her dark skin and blood red hair shining in the midday sun, almost taunting the flat chested, pasty white and pink haired Louise who was standing only a few feet from the woman

"Oh shut up Kirche." She growled, snapping at the red haired woman. "And don't think just because you summoned a Salamander that it makes you better than me" With a huff the tiny sorceress walked to the middle of the clearing, her wand out and ready to cast the spell that would summon her familiar.

"Don't screw it up now Zero" Kirche taunted her, knowing full well Louise's magic was both violent and explosive for even the simplest spells, hence why her title was Zero because she had never done a successful spell. Ever.

Taking a deep breath and giving a prayer out to whatever deity may be listening, Louise recited her spell. "My servant who resides somewhere in this vast universe!" Many of the other people in the clearing looked confused, that wasn't how the summoning spell went, but Louise ignored them, instead going on gut feel for her spell. For some reason the words fell from her lips as if she were a woman possessed. "My divine, beautiful, wise and powerful servant heed my call! I wish and assert from the very bottom of my heart, Answer my guidance and appear." For a moment nothing happened, several people blinked, confused. Even if that wasn't how the spell went, Louise was clearly putting magic in-

**BOOM!**

Never mind.

Many of the students started coughing as the smoke from the explosion rolled over them. Several sarcastic cry's of "Knew that was going to happen." Could be heard. There were also plenty of murmurs on what Louise could have summoned with such an explosive spell.

For many moments the students stared at the smoke cloud, unknowing of what waited within. Louise who was standing only a few feet away was watching the smoke in hope. 'please don't be messed up, PLEASE don't be messed up!'

Suddenly the wind began to pick up, blowing the smoke away to reveal a crouched figure, one hand on the ground in front of him, a strange knife like weapon in his other hand. Glancing around the man noticed all the humans around him and cautiously stood up, then the man's piercing black eyes noticed the short, pink haired girl only a few feet away. Light red eyes met coal black, neither blinking, each holding the others gaze.

Around the clearing the other student's could only think of one thing.

"A human?"

**_-ooo-_**

Itachi closed his eyes the moment the explosion hit, going into a crouch as he felt his feet hit the ground, one hand going forward to balance himself the other went to a kunai pouch stashed on his hip. If Itachi was more observant he would have remembered all of his kunai had been used during his battle with Sasuke but at the moment he was more concerned with looking for enemies. After all, one does not simply murder their entire clan and get away with it without repercussions. No, he had been on the run from hunter nin since day one after the massacre, and even before than, inbred ANBU training nearly made the act second nature anyway.

Scanning the surrounding area through the smoke, Itachi could sense the presence of many humanoid and animal like creatures around him, none of them really had any chakra to them so he could only assume that they were civilians at best, trained warriors hiding their chakra from him at worst. Though from the feel of things, many of the people around him were not even adults yet so the fact that this many teens could possibly hide their chakra from an S-rank ninja like him was almost zero.

So, with slight hesitation once the smoke cleared the young Uchiha stood up. He could hear several of them murmuring and he was pleased to note that yes they were teens. Only one of the people there looked old enough to really pose a threat to him. But from the book he had in his hand Itachi could only assume he had landed in the middle of some sort of class, perhaps that was why he was here? He mused. After all there were plenty of summoning jutsu where he came from, this could possibly be something along those lines...maybe it had something to do with that Impure world resurrection he had heard about from the Sandaime.

If that was the case, the man flashed his eyes down for a moment taking in his features and clothing.

What he found surprised him.

His skin was smooth, if a bit pale from lack of sun, which was usually what his skin looked like regardless due to his Uchiha genes. His clothing on the other hand was strange. He was wearing his traditional Akatsuki robe which covered his mesh armor and pale black shirt and ANBU pant's, his sandals and socks were similar to what he normally wore when he worked for the Akatsuki as well. Hell, he even had his ring necklace and konoha headband on, though strangely the headband wasn't scratched through. The only thing missing he noted was his Akatsuki ring which he had worn on his right hand ring finger.

But what truly surprised him, what nearly shocked him dead, was that he felt...good...better than good. He hadn't felt this good in years, like right before he had developed his wasting sickness. Mentally checking his chakra, he was both shocked and pleased to note that he had access to all of it, instead of his limited amount due to him shucking a good portion of it to his lungs to keep it from bleeding and have him drown himself in his own blood. And another thing he noted was that his vision was no longer blurry due to his overuse of the Mangekyo Sharingan. Finally able to see with 20/20 vision after so long the Uchiha put it to use scanning the faces of the crowd around him, which had continued to talk lowly in some strange foreign language that he couldn't understand, which come to think of it could pose a problem.

That's when his eyes landed on a young woman. She barely came up to his chest. His coal black eyes bored into the woman's pale red ones. Her confusion and...disappointment apparent on her face.

**"Who are you?"** He asked of the girl, who only looked at him strangely. '_Oh right, they speak a different language...this could be difficult.'_

That's when a shrill pompous laugh echoed around him. Both he and the girl turned to see... _'Is that a prostitute?' _Itachi mused silently, from the way the woman held herself he could tell she was a woman who got most of what she wanted from her beauty and shrewd dealings. Perhaps she was a kunoichi? Were there even ninja here?

"Just like I thought from Louise the Zero." Kirche laughed. "To think you actually summoned a peasant." Though her grin turned predatory as she took in the man before her. "Though I must say you did get the beautiful part of your spell right. He is quite handsome."

"This must be some kind of mistake, that's all" Louise bit back, throwing the fiery woman a dirty look.

"And yet you always live up to you moniker." Kirche chuckled into the back of her hand, the entirety of the class joining her.

Itachi watched this exchange curiously. Clearly this small girl next to him was getting picked on, that much was obvious but Itachi couldn't fathom why. After a fleeting glance through the throngs of students he noticed a particular pattern to the students in the clearing.

Each had an animal next to them, whether it was a small mouse sitting on their shoulder, or that strange lizard thing that that prostitute woman had. It didn't take long for him to put two and two together and assume it had been this little girl who had summoned him and that summoning a human like himself must be some form of failure for the girl, especially with the way that she was drooping her head in defeat. It was a look he hated to see on anyone's face, if it was one thing Itachi hated above all else, it was people putting others down for no other reason than to make themselves look better.

But before Itachi could make a move to put the slutty woman in her place. The strange girl had walked over to the old man and started to ask him something.

"Mr Colbert!" She asked the old man politely, if a bit frantic. "Can I please try the summoning spell again, this must have just been a fluke."

"I'm sorry Louise." he said sadly, shaking his head. "But the summon ritual is sacred and it affect a mage's entire life, trying a second time would be blasphemous, whether you like it or not, this man is your familiar."

"But Mr. Colbert, I've never heard of a peasant being someone's familiar!" She flinched slightly as that brought on more laughing from her peers.

"I am sorry Miss Valliere, this is nonnegotiable, now continue with the ritual."

Louise's eye's widened as she stared at the dark haired man in front of her. _'I...I have to kiss this man?'_Taking another look at him she at least had to agree with Kirche that he was indeed handsome...and the lines in his face gave the man a distinctive look, it wasn't aged but it gave off this intelligent vibe, so perhaps he was wise as well...Well even if he was only half of what she had tried to summon, he was still a peasant...and her familiar...deciding to suck it up and make the best of the situation, she motioned for Itachi to come forward.

Itachi who had been watching the little back and forth with some amusement saw the girls motion for him to come forward. _ 'hmm, I wonder what she want's?'_He mused quietly. If this girl had indeed summoned him then perhaps there was still something left to do to finalize the summon? Perhaps it was similar to the way the Inuzuka hounds were bonded to their partners...was this little girl wanting him to be her partner? Quite a strange turn of events in the Uchiha's mind. But like the stoic ANBU that he was Itachi showed no fear nor hesitation in approaching the girl. With a motion from the woman to bend down, the Uchiha did just that. Not a moment later he heard the girl muttering something, then felt the girls soft lips on his own and a curious surge of energy flow through him.

_'What is this feeling?'_He mused curiously, after their lips had broken he stared down at his hand where an odd warmth was building. Itachi turned his left hand over to stare curiously at a strange marking beginning to etch itself into his hand. The small tingling he felt before turning to outright burning, before turning into an almost unbearable pain.

Falling to one knee the man let out a small grunt of agony, holding his left wrist with his right hand as smoke rose from the limb.

_'Kami this hurts, what sort of jutsu is this, it feels as if I stuck my hand in Amaterasu's flames'_The Uchiha grit his teeth the mark setting itself into his hand. The pain eased up a few moments later as the power rushing through him began to wain.

Standing up, Itachi glanced once again at the mark. 'It appears to be some form of seal...interesting, I'll have to take a look at it later.' He looked up into the impatient eyes of his summoner, noting a strange expression on the balding teacher behind her. He was staring at the runes in barely contained shock... hmm just another thing he'd have to look into.

**_-ooo-_**

'You have got to be kidding...' Itachi's eyebrow twitched in annoyance as he stared at the young girl who had dragged him to what appeared to be her living quarters, before stripping in front of him and tossing her dirty laundry into his face.

From her commanding and angry tone and expression, she must have wanted him to wash them for her.

With a raised eyebrow Itachi dropped the clothes to the floor, looking at her in a 'make me' sort of way, arms crossed ever so slightly in defiance.

"Ughhh you can't even take orders like a regular familiar you, you..." Louise face creased down into a frown. "I don't think I ever got your name."

Itachi looked at her curiously, apparently her change in tone had piqued his interest.

"Your Naaaaame." She pointed to Itachi, waving her other hand a little bit.

Itachi stared at the girl trying to pantomime the word for name with a fair touch of amusement. _ 'Well I might as well humor the little brat, seeing as I have no clue where I am or what I am doing here.'_ The reborn Uchiha held a hand up to his chest. **"Itachi Uchiha"**He spoke smoothly before pointing to Louise.

Louise frown deepened as she heard that "Eetahchy OoCheehah?" What a strange name.

Itachi deadpanned, did she really just butcher his name like that? With a grunt he repeated himself **"Itachi Uchiha."**Again pointing to his chest before pointing at Louise.

"Itachi...Uchiha." She said finally, seeing a nod from the ninja she held a hand to her breast. "Louise Francoise le Blanc de la Valliere!" she spoke proudly, to the utter silence of her familiar.

Or at least it was utter silence before a small snort of amusement escaped him, along with a small Uchiha brand chuckle. **"Your name is ridiculous."**He laughed, his deep, sexy voice sending chills of both anger and arousal though Louise...at least until she got the general idea that he was mocking her for her name.

"Stop laughing you bastard!" She huffed, if anything the Uchiha laughed harder. "I said shut up!" She pulled her wand out and began mumbling something under her breath, with a small cry in her foreign language she pointed what appeared to be a small wooden senbon towards the ex ANBU captain, before the room was filled with a small explosion and smoke.

After a few seconds of controlled coughing from Itachi, the Uchiha turned his gaze on Louise, Sharingan spinning wildly in his eyes. "You know, I would appreciate if you wouldn't do that again." he spoke smoothly...and in her language!

"I...I understood that!" Louise pointed out, both surprised and disappointed seeing as that was supposed to be a silencing spell and yet it seemed to have turned into some manner of translation spell.

"And I as well it seems." Itachi nodded. "Good, that solves that issue. Now." He glared at the girl in front of him, his Sharingan still spinning but at a slightly slower speed. "Why have you summoned me little girl."

"Little...?" A tic mark appeared on her head, and her face scrunched up in anger. "I summoned you because I took part in a ritual to bring forth my familiar." Her nose went up haughtily. "You, apparently."

"Familiar." Itachi let the word roll off his tongue, it was a foreign word to him in the context that she was using it, but from the sound of her haughty reply it seemed as though the world was delegated to those who were summoned to serve a master of some sort.

"Yes, a familiar." She nodded. "I summoned you here to be MY familiar."

Itachi grimaced slightly at the way she said 'my' in such a possessive tone, like he was a mere object, but something else caught his attention. "And where exactly IS here." Itachi asked smoothly.

"What!" Louise looked mortified, "You don't even know where I summoned you to? Such a worthless familiar."

Itachi stared blankly at the girl, she really was an annoying person, but he didn't bother pointing this out as she would just yell more so he repeated his question.

"We are currently in the Tristanian Academy of Magic in the land of Tristain on the continent of Halkeginia." She retorted, waving a hand in his direction. "Now I plan to sleep, have my clothing washed and set out for me before I wake tomorrow." Without another word the girl had slipped into her bed and was soon fast asleep leaving the last Uchiha standing quietly in the room.

Shrugging, Itachi left the room to find if anyone had a washroom around here somewhere.

Skulking through the corridors of the castle-school Itachi came across a pair of students talking in the halls. One boy and one girl. The boy was a pompous buffoon at first glance, with his roguishly handsome face and foppish attitude along with his frilly shirt and rich clothing he came off as spoiled child. the girl next to him wasn't nearly as tacky looking, but she did have the air of nobility around her with the way she carried herself, she also seemed to be talking about baking some manner of food. Just what was a souffle? Eh, he could ask Louise later.

"I'd love to try one, sometime" The teen gestured extravagantly, the rose in his hand making his declaration seem even more cheesy.

"You really mean that?" The girl gushed, swirly little hearts around her head.

"Of course I do, Katie."" He answered. A charming smile plastered across his face. "Don't you know that I could never lie to you." If only he was telling the truth.

Yes, the boy lied. Itachi could see the boy's tell's giving him away even if no one else could. He appeared to be a womanizer of some sort, bragging and boasting about himself to get into a women's pant's all for the sake of bragging rights. A despicable and dishonorable practice in Itachi's opinion, but it really wasn't his place to say, so he ignored it and continued on his way down the hall.

"Hey you." The Uchiha froze. "Yes you." Itachi glanced over his shoulder at the boy, who had noticed him walking through the halls. "You're that commoner that Louise summoned, correct?"

"Hn." Itachi grunted, nodding once in standard Uchiha fashion, before he turned to walk away.

"Hmph, Such a lack of respect." The fop , turned his nose up in the universal sign of arrogance. "It must be a difficult thing to come to terms with, having such a disrespectful commoner for a familiar."

Itachi ignored the fop's goading since it wasn't nearly as effective as his summoners arrogance. At least with Louise the arrogance was well placed, she had summoned him of all people, so she had good taste at least. Pushing those thoughts aside he again set off down the hall to gather intelligence on the surrounding area.

_**-ooo-**_

It was nearly midnight, the twin moons hung in the air. It was this first discovery that had set Itachi on edge when he had taken his first steps outside. It was clear that this wasn't his world now, and that no manner of travel short of reversing the way he got here would send him back, and even then that was only conjecture seeing as the spell used was a one way spell from what what the Uchiha could gather by asking the staff.

Speaking of the staff, he had met a maid on his searches through the halls, committing the area to memory so if he had to make a run for it he could quickly and quietly make his escape.

The maid Siesta had been kind, if a bit of a ditz when she had shown him around the castle. Pointing out where the key places were; like the bathrooms, the kitchen, and most importantly, the Washroom, where he had washed and set out Louise's clothing. The odd maid had also pointed him to the testing grounds after he'd asked her for a place to train at. The testing grounds were just that, a place for classes to practice stronger and larger spells under the tutelage of the teachers training them. It had a small training ground in the back of the grounds that had several dummies and other physical equipment. Just the sort of thing he needed to keep his body in shape. Tomorrow he would get back into his training routine, it wouldn't do for him to let his new found vitality to stagnate in this world, not when he had a new lease on life.

Itachi stared up at the twin moons, well, they weren't exactly twins seeing as they were different colors and one was slightly larger than the other, but it was the thought that counted. A chill breeze blew through the air as he gaze at the stars, the cold bite dampened by his thick Akatsuki coat and a small blanket that he had weaseled (lol) from the maid, Siesta she had called herself. A woman of common charm but uncommon beauty, she wasn't what Itachi would want in a woman but he had never really given thought to what kind of woman he wanted anyway.

Sighing again the stoic Uchiha just laid back against the roof, taking a simple pleasure in the cool wind against his skin, the blanket providing enough warmth for him to relax.

The quiet of the night allowed Itachi to think of this new turn in his life, Why was he summoned here of all places? Why not send him on to the afterlife or something similar? Itachi had always assumed that he would had gone to some form of hell for his betrayals and murdering his entire clan. But that hadn't seemed to happen, instead he had found himself bound to some little girl as her glorified pet.

Shaking his head Itachi couldn't help but chuckle at the ridiculousness of his situation.

Maybe he could find out more about this place in the morning after he got himself situated and figured out if he wanted to stay here with the annoying pink haired brat or just escape and run off somewhere.

Eh, he'd figure that out in the morning. Itachi rolled over and wrapped himself in his blanket, falling into a fitful sleep.

_**-ooo-**_

Morning came early for Itachi. At the crack of dawn the man had gone back to Louise's room to check if the woman was awake. He found the woman just coming out of her sleep and preparing to get dressed...Which he had to help her with apparently... Itachi only sighed and went about his duty, not really caring much about dressing the pompous little girl. It had reminded him somewhat of Sasuke who had to help dress until he had learned to do it himself, so it wasn't an altogether unpleasant experience for him.

_**-ooo-**_

After a slightly awkward breakfast where he had again been treated like a pet Itachi found himself in a courtyard of sorts, all around him were tables set out for many of the students were talking to their familiars and from what Itachi could tell, were showing them off as well.

"Well if it it's the commoner that Louise summoned." A voice spoke up. Itachi turned to see that the 'prostitute' from earlier had spoken to him, and she appeared to be petting a giant red lizard of some sort... the flaming tail on the creature set it apart from an average giant red lizard of course.

"Kirche." Louise growled beside Itachi. "And just what do you want?"

"Oh I just wanted to see your familiar." Kirche smirked, turning a devious grin Itachi's way. "So how much did she pay you to pretend to be her familiar?"

Itachi only raised an eyebrow at that, sure he could understand someone assuming he had just been paid to pretend to be something. Hell, he had been paid to do that before dozens of times but at the moment he was slightly irritated and didn't really want to deal with the arrogant woman's crap.

"I wasn't paid to be her familiar." He spoke evenly, eying the woman with a bored glare.

Kirche chuckled. "Regardless, a commoner like yourself is the perfect familiar for Louise the Zero." She flicked her hair haughty at the pair and walked away, Her salamander not far behind her.

"Oooo, that woman." Louise growled, shaking her fist angrily at the woman's back. Her gaze snapped back to Itachi. "Don't just stand there you idiot, bring me tea!" before she walked off to sit at one of her own tables.

Itachi sighed, it was becoming tedious listening to the demands of this spoiled child, he had half a mind to just kill everyone here for the trouble and go live somewhere else, but then the Uchiha remembered that it was a massacre that had set him on his path to destruction the last time...so maybe a bit of patience would be in order...at least for a few more days, if she hadn't warmed up to him by then... well he'd burn that bridge when he he crossed it.

Wandering around the courtyard looking for a servant to help in his task, Itachi glanced at all the students around him, each of them had a familiar on or near them, and each was looked unique to their owner. There were bats, dogs, cats, a number of snakes, and many others both normal and extraordinary. Including one such creature that looked like a floating eyeball.

Although the thing had snuck up on him which had the unfortunate side effect of forcing him to take a quick step back and pulling out a kunai. Which in turn made him bump into Siesta the maid, who had been serving the nobles around here various tea's and deserts.

"Oof" The girl gasped, falling to her rear as she ran into the set in stone Itachi, who had used chakra to root himself to the ground in preparation for a leap to take him to safety in case he was in danger.

"Are you alright?" Itachi asked.

"I'm...I'm fine Mr. Itachi." Siesta smiled, having met the man yesterday when he was wandering the halls, now that had been an interesting evening.

"HEY where's my cake!" A voice yelled. Itachi turned to see the pompous womanizer from last night was back again, but this time it seemed as if he had a new lady waiting on his every word, womanizer indeed. Itachi scowled slightly at that. He respected women, especially kunoichi above almost all others, and watching someone go through women like this was both degrading and disgusting.

"Here let me take that to him." Itachi grunted, grabbing he cake platter from the woman. (Which incidentally hadn't fallen to the ground and been picked up like the 5 second rule was going out of style, yucky ground cake.)

"But Mr. Itachi..." She tried to stop him but a sharp glare stopped her cold.

"Allow me." Itachi walked calmly to the table where Guiche and the second lady of the evening was waiting for him.

"It's about time you brought it" The man yelled angrily, going back to sweet talking the woman not a moment after Itachi left. At least he was consistant.

As Itachi was walking away he spotted a certain blonde first year that just so happened to be the same person the womanizer had been talking to last night.

_'Walking around as if she is looking for someone, carrying a basket, possibly filled with those 'suffles' that they were talking about last night. Perfect.' _An uncharacteristic grin formed on Itachi's face, it was a little known fact, but the young man had been corrupted in his ways during his earlier years by watching over a certain blonde jinchuriki. He had watched Naruto go after ANBU like it was going out of style and prank some of the very best ninja in the village. Itachi was spared that fate since he had been kind to the boy, and he reaped the benefits be getting a free show in the process. Now, a bit of Naruto's mischievous side had rubbed off on the man, and not only that Itachi had a very good knack for poetic justice even before meeting Naruto. So with a just slight twitch of a grin on his lips he approached the woman.

"You are Katie, correct?" Itachi spoke evenly, startling the woman from her searching.

"Y-yes, she turned to look into teh twin pools of onyx that were Itachi's eyes. "Oh, you're that familiar from last night. Tell me, have you seen the man who was with me then? His name is Guiche."

"If you're talking about the man with the giant mole familiar. he's over there." Itachi pointed to the correct table and Katie gave him a nod of thanks.

_'No, thank you.' _Itachi chuckled under his breath, ah justice in any form was oh so satisfying. A loud crash and yelling signified the end to those two relationships very quickly.

"N-now wait a minute girls, I can explain." A quickly back peddling Guiche stuttered, falling to his butt right next to Itachi.

"Tell us the truth Guiche, what's going on?"

"Um." The trapped man looked around frantically, searching for some way to get out of this situation, that's when his eyes landed on Itachi, that cruel little smirk still plastered on his face. Guiche saw red at that, in his mind Itachi was mocking him and anyone mocking him just became disposable. "YOU." He pointed a finger at Itachi which made teh man raise an eyebrow. "Yes you. HOW DARE YOU spread such scandlous lies."

Oh now everyone around him was eating it up. The two girls weren't convinced but everyone else was drawn away from the bitching out, square onto Itachi's shoulders. Fuck...

"How dare you besmirch my honor" Guiche yelled, putting as much indignation and posturing as he could into the sentence "I challenge you to a duel!"

If anything Itachi's eyebrow rose even more. _'He plans to use me as a scapegoat.' _Itachi realized. But not a moment later a small grin touched his lips and a slight chuckle escaped his lips. "Accepted, time and place?"

Guiche got to his feet and took a dozen steps back. "Here and now." He growled, all of the students who were sitting at the tables were now crowded around the two.

"Very well." Itachi spoke evenly, his eyes flashing to the sharingan, if he was going to humiliate this fool, then he might as well do it soundly.

_**-ooo-**_

_**Hope you all enjoyed this weird idea of mine, I've always thought Itachi was a awesome characater that deserved more than what he got in Naruto, so this is a little story for him.**_

_**Also, don't worry, I'll have a new chapter of Sage of the elements up soon enough for those who are hoping for a new chapter of that. So till then.**_

_**Ciao.**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Sorry it took me so long to do this chapter, was a bit busy and I had pretty bad nasal infection that I'm still getting over and that kinda kept me from writing for long periods of time.**_

_**I enjoyed myself on this chapter, I owe that partly to the two songs of the day listed below along with a massive amount of dubstep. **_

_**Fic of the day: The Animaniac Dude - The Will Of D.**_

_**A One Piece time travel fix fic, which I must say I'm really partial to and am waiting for it to update :D. This story doesn't need any assistance from me to promote it, but those of you who haven't read it, here's the summery.**_

_**Summery: **__**Luffy loses his entire pirate crew to marines in a final battle at raftel, only to find there never was any treasure there. When a man long thought dead instead appears and takes luffy under his wing, nothing is as it seems. the Will Of D lives on. LuNa.**___

_**Song/vid of the day: Tech N9ne's "Last words" and Stratkat's "Azure blades" Look up stratkat on newgrounds and you'll find his song there.**_

_**Word/s of the day: Hashtag Ballin**_

_**ooo-**_

"Talking"

_'Thinking'_

**"Different Language"**

Jutsu/magic spells

_**-ooo-**_

_**Chapter 2: Curious.**_

_**-Previously-**_

"How dare you besmirch my honor" Guiche yelled, putting as much indignation and posturing as he could into the sentence "I challenge you to a duel!"

If anything Itachi's eyebrow rose even more. _'He plans to use me as a scapegoat.' _Itachi realized. But not a moment later a small grin touched his lips and a slight chuckle escaped his lips. "Accepted, time and place?"

Guiche got to his feet and took a dozen steps back. "Here and now." He growled, all of the students who were sitting at the tables were now crowded around the two.

"Very well." Itachi spoke evenly, his eyes flashing to the Sharingan, if he was going to humiliate this fool, then he might as well do it soundly.

_**-ooo-**_

Itachi stared out over the hastily erected arena, the curious students who were watching the coming battle were the walls of the arena and the green grass which crunched underfoot, their Colosseum floor.

"Familiar!" A angry yell rose up over the crowd.

Itachi glanced imperceptibly out of the corner of his eye, his Sharingan capturing with picture perfect clarity the sight of his master's angry face.

"How dare you take part in a duel without my permission." The small pink haired girl stomped forward and grabbed a hold of Itachi's hand. "You will apologize to Guiche right now."

Itachi for his part stared blankly at the girl, she hadn't met his eyes yet so he couldn't tell what she was thinking but at a glance, her stiff shoulders and trembling hands led him to believe that she was frightened of something. Glancing back at Guiche Itachi couldn't for the life of him know what she was afraid of, even if the fop was a master of magic Itachi was far stronger than any amount of energy the boy had within his body, it didn't mean that Itachi was going to be lax around the man, no. But while he did consider him a threat, he by no means considered him an equal.

"No." Itachi spoke simply, he would not apologize since it was Guiche who had instigated this entire thing with his philandering.

Louise's gaze snapped up to look him in the face and that's when her features froze, her entire body going stiff as she gazed into Itachi's eyes. The three tomoe spun lazily around the shrunken pupil of his eye. The slight glow they held seemed to look right through her, to stare into her very soul and pick it apart like it was an open book. That thought chilled the girl to her bones as a small shiver went through her.

"Please stand back." Itachi murmured. "I do not wish for anyone to be caught up in this."

Louise, despite herself, shivered once again. Then in an almost barely perceptible nod the girl backed off from him and stood on the edge of the gathered students. She didn't know why she had listened to him, just that, at that moment in time, when she had stared into his eyes and he had stared back... the cold, calculating eyes that man held... it frightened her, beyond all manner and reason, it frightened her.

Itachi turned back to his opponent lazily, eyes still watching with clarity all the things within his vision, Time itself seemed to slow down as he gazed at Guiche, a power of his Sharingan, taking in his surroundings and slowing his perception of time down by almost 25 times normal speed. He could pick up the vibrations in the air from a humming bird flapping its wings at nearly 100 yards away if he so chose, so the sight of the almost useless fop going into some kind of dueling stance did little to worry him.

"My name is Guiche the bronze, therefore-" He flicked a single petal from the rose in his hand. Said petal landed on the ground and a bright light rose up bringing forth a strange suit of armor. It was a curious thing, far skinnier than what a human could wear and had over proportioned pauldrons, gauntlets and shin guards, along with a pair of small wings coming off the helm like some angelic hair piece. "A Bronze Golem -The Valkyrie- shall be your opponent."

Suddenly the suit of armor rushed forward, it's large metal right hand leading.

Itachi saw all of this and more, to most it would have seemed like a blur, but to his Sharingan eyes, it may as well have been standing still. His eye's widened imperceptibly, the tomoe spinning faster and his pupil shrinking even more as it hyper focused on the fist, judging it's path and choosing the best method to deflect and counter the attack.

Which he did. The suit of armor tried to land a viscous punch to the Sharingan users sternum and knock the air from his lungs. but a side step and grab had the armor off balance as it's weight and momentum was used against it, sending the hunk of bronze into a forward roll that left it buried in the wall behind him. Luckily the students had the right mind to not stand in the direct line of the attack seeing as the golem could have launched the boy into them, that hadn't happened of course and it left the student nobles around Itachi gaping in shock as their eyes went from the man to the golem stuck headfirst in the castle walls and back again several times, too shocked to say anything.

Itachi turned back to Guiche, a blank look to his face. "Are you done?" he asked politely, seeing if it was his turn to strike the man. After all, this was a duel and politeness dictated that he wait for his opponent to allow him to attack...well at least that's what Itachi wanted him to think, if it were up to him he would have ended the fight in barely an eyeblink, but the curious Uchiha wanted a first hand glimpse at the abilities of these 'magi' so far he wasn't impressed, as a well trained genin could have defeated this buffoon. That's not to say he wasn't impressed with the technique used, seeing as it was made from the earth and he'd never seen any Earth Release users who could create a clone or golem of that caliber out of metal. But the main problem was that the noble had completely wasted his chance at trapping Itachi, if he had sent the contraption forward at a slow and reasonable speed then suddenly shifted speed where there was no time to block it, he could have scored a hit. Not that he would have considering Itachi had Sharingan eyes and they would have picked up any flinch of movement the creature made.

Guiche's face scrunched up in anger, marring the mans dashing good looks with an ugly grimace. "You-you-you!"

"Yes?" Itachi asked blankly, he really didn't know why the man was getting so angry with him, he had just dodged to the side, it was his own golems fault for making a fool out of itself and him.

"You Bastard." The noble yelled, flicking his rose a half dozen more times, each time a petal would be released and another golem would rise from the ground.

Itachi sighed, slipping into a fighting stance, his family's fighting stance. The Interceptor Fist. One of the greatest fighting styles in the world, on par with both the Goken and Jyuken. Like the two aforementioned fighting styles, the Interceptor fist was a study in opposites, while it was possible to use the Interceptor fist without the Sharingan, Like it's Byakugan cousin it was best used in tandem with the Uchiha kekkei genkai. The style relied upon intercepting (Hence the name) And either deflecting or counter attacking.

That was where the similarities to the Jyuken ended and it's resemblance to the Goken began. Unlike the Jyuken, The interceptor fist struck with speed and physical power rather than subversion and internal energy, much like the Goken in that regard. And it shouldn't have been a surprise since the Interceptor fist was an amalgam of all the different styles the Uchiha had fought up to that point, if something defeated their current style they copied and included what defeated it allowing them to match any and all taijutsu users on equal footing as long as the two users were of similar physical strength and speed. The only downsides to the style was it's inability to match opponents of superior speed and strength, which the Jyuken excelled at, so it was a toss up for the most part, but in the hands of an Uchiha with fully awakened Sharingan it was still a force to be reckoned with to be sure.

Which wasn't lost on a certain blue haired woman watching the fight with barely any interest, an open book one hand and a staff shaped in a shepherds crook in the other. However the moment Itachi had went into his stance the young woman's eyes widened almost imperceptibly, her book closing as she watched the fight with further interest.

"What's up Tabitha?" Kirche asked her friend curiously, normally the reclusive young bluenette wouldn't have batted an eyelash at such a fight but here she was staring intently at the duel as if something had caught her eye.

What the fire sorceress didn't know was that something had caught Tabitha's eye. The girl had scanned the style Louise's familiar was using and to her shock couldn't find anything similar to it in her memory, and from the way the man held himself, the sheer certainty of his grace and movements...it looked like he was as skilled a warrior as his cool demeanor hinted at. And something else strange she noticed was that his eyes were a different color than before, she hadn't noticed it when the fight first started, but when Itachi had dodged to the side, she had noticed the blood red coloration of the Uchiha's orbs and was now curious as to why that was... clearly this fight would be...interesting.

Back with the fight, Guiche had leveled his rose parallel to the ground. He pointed it at the Uchiha and ordered "Destroy him!" Sending the half dozen metal golems Itachi's way. However, this time they lead with the sharpened tips of spears rather than a solid fist.

Like Itachi cared. The first spear flew harmlessly wide as Itachi swatted it away with the back of his fist. Another spear tried striking him between the eyes but a simple tilt of the head had the spear going over his left shoulder. Itachi grabbed the next spear and yanked on it, sending the creature holding it into another of the other golems that had tried to circle and strike him from behind.

"Foolish" Itachi murmured, lancing out with a kick to one of the creatures helmed faces, smashing the visor and sending it flying back over the crowd of students. Leaning his head back the spear that would have gone through both of his ears instead skimmed the tip of his nose leaving a slight scratch as his Sharingan studied the wood grain of the spear absently. Tiring of the thing in his vision he grabbed the offending item, again yanking the metal soldier forward to meet a palm strike which knocked it on it's ass, Itachi standing over it with it's spear still in his hand.

Runes flashed slightly on the young man's hand as he spun the spear around like he was a natural and smashed another of the golems over the head, knocking it's helmet off and dropping it to the ground in pieces.

Itachi stared at the runes on his left hand curiously, his eyes scanning the power flowing from the rune and watching as it ran up his arm and shoulder before disappearing into his spinal cord.

_'Curious.'_ Deciding to look into what the Symbols on his hand were doing later as he used the spear in his hand to deflect another pair of spear thrusts from two of the bronze soldiers. One passing harmlessly overhead, the other getting knocked down and to the right digging into the ground by the Uchiha's foot and halting the forward motion of the golem. A state which Itachi took advantage of as he smashed the lifeless thing in the head, again sending the creature into a heap of pieces.

Now with only three golems left, one of which was without a weapon, Itachi glanced out of the corner of his eye at his opponent. He saw with some satisfaction that the arrogant fop had a look of shock on his face. It was the look of a man who could only stare on as his entire world was crumbling around him. It wasn't an expression Itachi took satisfaction in creating, but he would be lying if he said he didn't enjoy seeing the arrogant noble's mouth drop open in shock.

Itachi smirked ever so slightly, bringing the spear back to bear and slamming it down on top of the weaponless golem, the pressure of he blow breaking both it and the spear into pieces. The Uchiha grunted in irritation at the loss of his weapon but shrugged as the remaining two golems rushed him, one going high, the other going low in a sweeping motion. The Sharingan in Itachi's eye again dilated, focusing on the two quickly converging weapons, with a practiced hand the Uchiha grabbed the top most spear and jumped completely over the heads of both golems. With a snap, Itachi kicked the golem who's spear he was holding in the spine, breaking the thing into pieces, the other golem whirled in place trying to strike while Itachi was busy with the first, but a quick block with the spear he'd again taken from the golem stopped the attack cold and gave Itachi enough time to smash the things head in.

Complete and utter silence rang out over the mass of students. Most were too shocked to even say anything as they had watched the supposed 'commoner' take down a magi of no little skill like he was a child, fighting on par if not surpassing 6 analogs of highly trained soldiers.

Itachi ignored all of this, instead he focused his entire gaze upon Guiche, Sharingan spinning wildly as he studied his opponent. "Are you quite done?" Itachi asked absently, becoming annoyed with the fodder the man was throwing at him.

Guiche on the other hand was nearly shitting his pants. He had created some of his most powerful golems and this man, this familiar had destroyed them with barely a scratch on him. Guiche was beginning to feel a very real fear go up his spine as the bastard in front of him stared with those evil red eyes, which seemed to stare right through him into his soul. That's when he noticed it, a slight movement behind Itachi from the far wall where his first golem had crashed. During the fight the creature must have dug itself out and now was prepared to strike the unaware Uchiha in the back. Guiche smirked, willing the golem to stab him with as much power as it could manage.

A slight gasp went up out of the crowd. Louise watched as Guiche's golem closed in on her unknowing familiar. A shout of warning escaped her lips when only a few feet separated the golems spear tip and the back of her familiar.

Hearing the shout from Louise, time seemed to slow down for Itachi, even more so then when he was using his fully matured Sharingan. Slowly turning, to his eyes milliseconds seeming like days as his orbs landed on the golem that would have speared him in the back, the spear only inches from impaling him. Reacting entirely on instinct the Uchiha shunted a massive amount of chakra to his right eye. Time stopped for the man as his eye morphed from the three tomoe to a tri-bladed curved shuriken. However, something strange happened. The runes on his left hand flared to life, a searing surge of energy going straight to his eyes. For one fraction of a second Itachi's eye morphed yet again, the curve of each point of his Mangekyo straightening out while a second straight upside down tri-pronged shape overlapped the first, creating a starburst pattern.

From Itachi's body a giant skeletal, black flame covered fist struck the golem, sending it careening into a heap a few feet away. The skeletal arm of Itachi's ghostly Susanoo disappeared a moment after allowing Itachi to focus on the creature on the ground. Another surge of energy went up his arm and to Itachi's surprise the black flames of his Amaterasu sprung out from his right eye and struck the golem, immolating it in searing heat.

The creature's screeches as it's armor melted and twisted into a molten mass of metal sent chills up the spines of everyone there, but the person most shocked by the flames was Itachi himself.

_'T-that didn't hurt?'_ Itachi breathed, normally when he used his Mangekyo Sharingan a searing pain would go through his eye as the powers of the kekkei genkai ate away at his sight, A small trickle of blood still rolled down his cheek like a teardrop but the accompanying pain that was normally there, wasn't. _'Just another thing I must look into when I have the time'_ He mused, then the fatigue hit him. Surprise crossed Itachi's semi hidden features as he felt his energy leave him, as soon as his eye had deactivated to the mature Sharingan form his strength dropped below that of a low ranking chunin's causing his body to shudder for a moment before it stabilized itself. _'It seems this new found power comes with a price after all.' _The grimace that scrunched his face at the weakening was hidden by the collar of his coat.

Turning back to the fool Noble Itachi had a front row seat of the man pissing himself in fear as he watched his golem turn into a pile of molten slag before the fires of Amaterasu had worked their course and burned the metal to nothingness. "Are you done now? Is it my turn to attack?" If anyone who knew Itachi had been there they would have noted the slightly amused tone he held as he watched the arrogant fool soil himself in front of dozens of his peers.

Guiche's eyes widened to the size of diner plates in fear, slowly backing away from the man...no, the monster that was Louise's familiar. "I-I-I G-give up!" He stuttered and screamed all at the same time, turning on his heels and running away like the coward he was.

Itachi's nostril flared slightly when the man ran away from a perfectly honorable duel. "Pathetic." He mumbled under his breath, allowing his pupils to revert back to their normal black hue. For having the title 'noble' Guiche sure didn't act like it.

"...Interesting" Tabitha mused quietly as she stared at the strange man and the even stranger magic he had used to burn through Guiche's golem. It was unlike any magic that she had seen before and it had peeked her curiosity, maybe she would have to ask the man how he did it sometime.

"You can say that again." Kirche blushed, she watched the last of Itachi's black flames ate away at the ground around the golem before it consumed itself and disappeared. "His flames are so hot, they burn with a passionate flame." The women hugged herself and giggled, her breasts pushed up and bouncing in glee.

"You're hopeless." The bluenette next to her shook her head sadly, walking away and ignoring the woman who was giggling like a school girl behind her.

Casually walking back to Louise, Itachi noted that many of the students who had whispered about him being a commoner were now giving the man a wide berth, as he made his way through the crowd to his summoner.

"H-how?" Was all the young girl asked, too shocked by Guiche's crushing defeat to voice anything else.

"I am a shinobi." He replied simply, like that would answer all questions, and in most cases it would have. But since he was in a different world that answer wouldn't explain anything to the confused girl.

"Come on." She replied numbly, grabbing the Uchiha's hand. "We need to talk."

Itachi only raised an eyebrow as the young woman lead him back to her room.

_**-10 minutes later-**_

Slamming the door behind her, the young girl spun in place, leveling a glare the Uchiha's way "Alright, just what the hell are you? You're clearly not a commoner, not even a commoner soldier of the Tristanian guard could do what you just did."

"I have said this before, I am a shinobi." he spoke evenly, not bothered by the fact that he was repeating himself."

"I understand that! But what IS a shinobi?"

Itachi sighed, this would be a long explanation. "A shinobi is a male ninja. A kunoichi being the female name for one. A ninja simply put, is a soldier for the village that he or she are aligned. I for instance was a shinobi of Konohagakure, or hidden leaf village." He pointed to the leaf shaped symbol on his headband.

"So you're a soldier then?" Louise asked curiously.

Itachi nodded. "Yes, in a way. However, a shinobi for a village is more like a mercenary that is loyal to said village." The Uchiha sat down in a chair with Louise joining across from him. "A shinobi village takes job requests from potential clients. The leader of the village then ranks them from D Rank chores like weed picking and general upkeep of the village to S rank espionage and major political assassinations. That is so that each of five ranks of ninja can take missions that are appropriate to them."

"And, what rank were you?" She asked hesitantly. If this man was as dangerous as he appeared to be... Louise shivered despite herself.

"There are six ninja ranks; Genin, Chunin, Tokubetsu Jonin, Jonin, ANBU and Kage." He held up four of his fingers. "The first four are the general army, that are given the basic D-A Rank missions. C rank or less for Genin, B rank or less for Chunin, and A rank or less for most Jonin. Tokubetsu Jonin are usually sent on B rank or less. As for me, I was an ANBU."

Louise shivered, that was dangerously close to the top of the pecking order, most likely similar to a commander or general. "And what missions do the ANBU take...And the Kage?"

"ANBU are the villages Black Ops, they along with a select few Jonin take on S rank missions personally given by the leader of our village, or Kage. I served the Hokage, or Fire Shadow of konoha.

"S-so, you're an assassin then?' She asked, remembering quite clearly what those S-Rank missions were.

"Among other things, yes. Though most chunin can get a low ranking assassination mission if they wanted too. There are different kinds of missions that can be taken, from guarding someone, to helping build buildings and even as a personal escort if the money is good enough."

The way he said 'Personal Escort' Made Louise shudder in disgust, that was barely better than prostitution. "A-and...h-how did you...your eyes and that fire." Another wave of revulsion went through her body, this time from remembering those vicious and rich crimson that his eyes had taken, the three odd symbols in his iris seeming to spin around his pupil.

"The eyes are my Sharingan." The Uchiha flashed his namesake once to show the girl, who shivered again despite herself. "They are the Kekkei Genkai of my clan, an in-born ability that is passed down through a family like a genetic trait. They let me see things that I wouldn't normally be able to see, like the energy you use for spells, I can see and possibly disrupt them if given enough time and the right tools."

Louise backed away imperceptibly to most, but to Itachi he noted her fear clearly, the reason for Louise's fear was that the description of his Sharingan sounded a lot like a 'mage killer' to the girl, a fairytale about a creature who could defeat any spell and was hired out by people to get rid of naughty little nobles if they didn't go to bed before midnight. The story had since lost its fear inducing veil to the now grown girl but the message of what the mage killer could do did not. And that thought frightened the girl, even moreso since she found out that her familiar was an assassin of all things. "And the fire?" She asked tentatively.

Itachi stared at the girl for a moment, he really didn't want to go too in depth to what his Sharingan could do in case he had to kill the girl in front of him and make a run for it, but a simple description couldn't hurt and it may just sate her curiosity enough that she might treat him with a bit more respect in the near future. "It is a jutsu that comes from my eyes" he spoke evenly. "The flames are inextinguishable except by me or by the flame burning to nothingness what it has caught fire."

Louise's stomach fell at that. Such power, wielded by a familiar, and one who she wasn't entirely sure she had full control over, the girl started shaking as she asked another of the nagging questions she had.

"A-and w-w-hat are j-jutsu?"

"I believe the term you use here for your mystical arts is magic, correct?" He stared at the girl who nodded shakily that that was the case. "Well then, Jutsu is simply another form of magic...Though my jutsu differ from your magic in that most of what I do is internal, pulling an energy produced in my body, known as chakra. While you use external, natural energies that you pull from nature to power your spells."

Louise let out a breath she didn't know she was holding, if it wasn't that different from magic then perhaps he was a noble? Maybe she had more in common with him than she first thought...and maybe he wouldn't try to slit her throat in the middle of the night like most assassins do. A gulp was the only betrayal of the woman's thoughts on the matter. Trying to keep the conversation going so he wouldn't point out her discomfort the girl asked him a question that had been nagging her since she had first saw him use his flames. "So, you said you were from a clan, are you a noble then?"

Itachi blinked owlishly for a moment. "Pardon?" he asked curiously.

"You use magic...or at least something like it, that would make you a noble then right?"

The Uchiha snorted in a small amount of amusement, the very thought of him being a 'Noble' if he was going by this worlds definition of the word was laughable at best. "No, I'm not a noble, though we did have nobles where we came from." Louise's perked up slightly. "But none that I knew of were capable of using jutsu." She drooped at that. "Anyone can become a ninja as long as they start training at a young age. Ninjutsu are used by a ninja, much like my fire ninjutsu I used. Taijutsu are physical martial arts and Genjutsu is use of illusion like abilities that can confuse any of a persons five senses."

"As for me being a part of a clan..." Here Itachi stopped, a small pang of guilt running through him as he remembered his slaughtering of his clan, of killing his flesh and blood so that his village could live on. A small grimace crossed his face, invisible to all but the most perceptive. "The Uchiha clan...in the Village of Konoha they were once the most powerful clan of the village, beside their rivals the Senju clan. It was the Senju and the Uchiha who started the hidden village system for ninja like myself. And Konoha where I was from was the Largest, most powerful and influential village in the world, easily capable of holding it's own for an extended period of time against any two of the other four great ninja villages of where I'm from."

Itachi shrugged lightly when he noticed Louise looking at him in a mixture of shock and awe. "Whether that makes me a noble is for others to decide, personally I have no use for titles."

By now Louise was nearly hyperventilating. This man, her familiar, Was not only an equivalent to a mage where he was from but also an extremely high ranking one, his powers alone made him noble by her countries standards but beyond that he was from a clan that, along with one other were the dominant families of the largest and strongest village in their world...And this man was her familiar? ...It was nearly too much to take in.

"Louise-san?" Itachi asked quietly, a hint of concern in his voice as he trying to bring the girl back from whatever was causing her breathing to dip like it was.

Louise stared at Itachi for a moment before nodding, taking a couple of deep breaths and slowing her breathing. She had been thinking about this all the wrong way. At first she had thought the man a mere commoner, to her chagrin. Then he had defeated Guiche so easily which caused fear to bloom up inside her chest. But now...Now, she realized that she had indeed summoned a divine, beautiful, wise and powerful familiar, just like she had asked. Swallowing once to try and calm herself, Louise asked her last question, and this one was probably the most important of them all. "Why?" She spoke softly.

"Hn?" Itachi grunted curiously.

"I-If you're so powerful and amazing...why haven't you gone somewhere else or done something about me? You've disobeyed a direct order from me, which shouldn't be possible because of the ritual...so why have you done as I've asked so far and not..." Here she gulped again. "Killed me for treating you like an animal...or at least left the school and disappeared."

Itachi raised an eyebrow in surprise, the girl had guts asking that kind of question he'd give her that. "First off, I wouldn't kill you unless you tried to harm me and even then I wouldn't go so far as to kill you simply from blocking a angry kick to the shins or something similar." Itachi waved a hand dismissively. "Do not be afraid of that if that is what you're fearing right now."

Louise nodded slightly, relaxing in her seat a bit.

"Second." The man tapped a finger into the table to accentuate his point. "I haven't left yet because I have nowhere to go, I have no idea how to read your language, only how to speak it, so trying to find myself around in this world would be exceedingly difficult without someone telling me where to go." He really didn't want to be telling Louise this but it wasn't going to change the fact that he was stuck in a foreign land with no means of finding his way around and asking people about their written language would label him a foreigner. In Itachi's experience, people tended to mistrust and in some cases apprehend foreigners, so that was something he really wanted to avoid.

"And finally." Itachi sighed. "I want answers to some of my own questions, since you seem to want to know all about me, you can at least show me the same courtesy."

Louise, who had been listening intently, nodded slowly. After all, Itachi had been rather open about who and what he was, it would only be proper to answer his questions as well...Also she really didn't want to piss the man off, she was still nearly scared silly from the man's occupation.

"Hn. My first question has to do with the state of the worlds advancement. Do you know what electricity is?"

Louise nodded, "Isn't that like lightning?"

"Yes it is. Now, do you use electricity to power any of your lights or machinery?" A frown and a shake of the head answered him. _ 'Hmm, well that answers that question, it seems I've landed in a regressive technological world..." _Itachi rubbed his chin absently as he mulled over that information, clearly the world he was in relied on magic to fuel its economy and the working class were little more than civilians.

Filing that away for later Itachi focused back on Louise "Next question. Are there any wars going on that I should be aware of?"

Louise's frown deepened as she searched her memory of anything going on in politics of the neighboring kingdoms. "No." She spoke at length. "I'm pretty sure everything has been pretty quiet lately for the most part."

The Sharingan user nodded. "Good, final question. Why do the students of this school harass you and call you 'Louise the Zero?" The way Louise stiffened up at that question and her mouth drew up in a tight line, Itachi knew he had possibly overstepped a boundary somewhere. "If you don't wish to speak of it." He explained smoothly, diverting some of the volatile girls anger. "Then just ignore the question I just asked. I was hoping I would be able to help with your problem seeing as I am currently in your care. After all, a threat to you is a threat to me by extension, seeing as people will assume I am your familiar and I'd rather take care of the problem now than have to deal with it later."

Louise glared at him for several minutes before her features softened, he had been rather open about his own occupation and skills, it would only be fair to explain why people seemed to think she was some sort of failure. "You said that you use fire correct?"

Itachi raised an eyebrow at that, she was asking a question to answer a question? Hmm... he could play along but he didn't like that she was deflecting his question. "Yes, I am attuned to the elemental nature of fire by family birthright, I also have a minor affinity to both water and earth, but with my Sharingan I am capable of using jutsu of lightning and wind natures as well." The young mage seemed to deflate even more... maybe he shouldn't have said something like that...

"The reason people call me 'Louise the Zero'" She ground out bitterly. "Is because I'm not attuned to any element. All magic is attuned to one of the five elements so if you cant use an element you cant use magic." Louise sighed and straightened her posture slightly. "You saw the results of my magic yourself." She supplied. "I tried casting a silencing spell on you when you still couldn't speak my language, but that exploded and ended up turning into a translation spell of all things."

"Interesting... try a small spell for me here please." He flashed to his Sharingan, staring intently at Louise.

Louise stiffened slightly at the request. "Uhh, sure..." She turned around, facing the more open part of her room. A quick mumble and flick of her wand and what was supposed to be a small wind spell failed dramatically, exploding in a ball of acrid smoke. "You see!" She huffed, spinning around and facing Itachi "Its always the same...what is it?" The moment Louise's eyes landed on Itachi's frowning face a small sliver of hope went through the girl.

The man was frowning, staring curiously at the space that had just been engulfed in smoke.

"Strange...You say that all magic is based in the five elements? From what I'm seeing, it is neither a fire, water, earth, wind or lightning spell, it is something different."

"Wait...Lightning is the fifth element for your people?" Louise asked curiously, she didn't want to stop him from describing his discovery but this was too interesting to pass up.

"Yes, each of the five great nations from where I come from have each a ninja village that excels at one of the five elements. The village of Konoha is based in the land of fire, my family was the poster child of the village since nearly every one of my family had a fire affinity." He replayed the memory of Louise's spell in his mind.

"Strange...we really only use four of the five elements; fire, wind, water and earth. The fifth element; void, hasn't been seen for nearly six thousand years."

This time both of Itachi's eyebrows rose, It had been that long since someone had used void magic? That was before even the time of the Rikkudo Senin "No, what's strange is I didn't see any kind of element in your magic...it was simply...a void." Itachi sent a meaningful look Louise's way.

Which the young woman caught. Her eyes slowly widened, jaw dropping nearly to the table. "V-void?" She asked incredulously, standing up and slamming her hands onto the table. "THAT is my element?"

Itachi watched as the young girl started cussing in several different languages that he didn't have the first clue about even with the help of that translation spell. "So it seems." The Uchiha spoke evenly. "Why are you angry, if it had been one of my clan to unlock a mythical elemental affinity they would be celebrated." He cocked his head to the side in curiosity, since what he said was true, if one of his family...hell, any ninja in the village gained what could be considered as a bloodline, they would be considered a prodigy almost instantly and then sent off as breeding stock to try and make more of him, it was a sad way to handle something like that but the village had laws for things like a new bloodline or one that was going extinct. Rarely were they used and rarely would anyone subject themselves to something that demeaning...though a few had done it on occasion.

"Because you idiot!" Louise growled angrily,running her hands through her hair and tearing a few strands out. "Void magic is a lost art, there aren't any books or teachers. There's no way I can learn something like that without help!" She laid her head on the table and covered her face with her hands.

"And what exactly am I then?" Itachi spoke curiously.

Louise uncovered her eyes to stare at him.

The Uchiha smirked at the rather cute display, she reminded him of an angry puppy that would sulk for most of the day, but still had that look of innocence to its face. "I just told you I can see your magic as it's happening, and I am a skilled instructor when it comes to Ninjutsu. So what doesn't qualify me to help you discover how to use your magic?"

"Ughh, you just don't get it." Louise moaned. "You said it yourself that Magic and Ninjutsu are different, how the heck does that make you qualified to teach me anything?"

"Well." Itachi mused. "When Ninja were just starting to use elemental jutsu, they didn't use long complicated handsigns most do now." As if to punctuate that fact, Itachi flew through half a dozen handseals in the blink of an eye and held his pointer finger and thumb up to his lips. "Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique" a small flame flew from the Uchiha's mouth in the clan's signature jutsu. After the small flame died down, much to the shock of the young mage across from him Itachi continued his explanation. "Back then Ninja mostly used direct control of their elements. The Nidaime Hokage, one of our villages greatest ninja, was said to be able to use water jutsu in the middle of a desert." Itachi spoke with a reverence of the man since he was one of the teachers and mentors to Sarutobi, A man he both feared and revered, even in death. "His mastery of the water element was so great that he could conjure a water dragon which normally takes forty-four handseals with just one."

"So what does that have to do with anything?" Louise asked, a strange bit of curiosity in her voice. What was her familiar playing at?

A small hint of irritation crossed Itachi's features, the girl was too impatient...he'd have to fix that. "It means that you are going to have to learn through trial and error, practicing day in and day out on how to use your element, just like the ninja of old." He fixed her with a firm stare. "And I shall be helping you."

A long silence permeated the room as Louise sat there, quietly thinking over the ninja's words. She had always wanted to learn how to control her magic, even when she was younger she was seen as a hopeless cause...but now... She looked up into Itachi's eyes, seeing his calm and piercing gaze staring back at her...it filled her with a sense of longing? Anticipation? Whatever the feeling, this man had offered her the one thing no one in this entire school had ever tried to give her.

Help.

And that was something she could truly respect in the man, she felt it the moment she had first locked eyes with the man's Sharingan, those deep pools of crimson telling her in no uncertain terms that he could and would do exactly what he set out to do, no matter the cost. She hadn't known it before but the fear she had felt from seeing the man's eyes didn't have anything to do with fear of the man, but more a fear of how far he would go to complete his goals.

With those thoughts in mind and a fire in the her eyes she asked him "When do we begin?"

_**-ooo-**_

_**Ok that's it for the second chapter, hope you like what I'm doing so far and if I'm not...please don't inundate my inbox... _**_


	3. Chapter 3

_**Ok, sorry for the wait, things happened, things that needed happening and were unavoidable, also writers block is a bitch, so's hurting my wrist.**_

_**Yeah my wrist, feels like I tore something, not sure what, but shit kinda hurts yo.**_

_**Shit sucks yo.**_

_**But besides all that here's the next chapter**_

_**Fic of the day: Persona 3: Fairly English Story by SamJaz. If you're a persona fan and you haven't read this story then shame on you. This is basically Persona 3 told through the eyes of the protagonist, cept he's English this time. Hence the title. Basically, this story is powered by GAR, taken up to eleven and is basically a retelling where Minato is as much of the memetic badass that the fandom portray him as. The summery sums that up nicely.**_

_"Persona 3: FES, only Minato is English, hence the title. Then Minato cheats the game. So the game cheats back. So Minato cheats the world."_

_**Yeah, that. If that isn't badass I don't know what is.**_

_**Song of the day: **_【MMD Test】『え？あぁ、そう。 』をLukaさんに踊ってもらった 60fps 1920x1080. _**As always copy and paste into youtube, the channel name should be **__**dolls919496 **__**under the vid. Enjoy**_

_**word of the day: Collywobbles**_

_**Disclaimer: Dont own Naruto or Familiar of zero, dont make any money off of it either.  
**_

_**-ooo-**_

"Talking"

_'Thinking'_

**"Different Language"**

Jutsu/magic spells

_**-ooo-**_

_**Chapter 3: Training**_

Bored

Itachi was bored.

The Uchiha's eyes scanned the classroom he was in as the magi in the room took notes, their teacher going over several different points in magical history. Which, while a curiosity to the displaced ninja, didn't peak his interest for more than a few moments

Itachi's boredom was something of a curse to the poor man, who had spent most of his life either in battle or in stressful situations, even when he was meditating he was doing something productive, but sitting in a room full of chatty students and the annoying scratch of quill on paper kept the man from even enjoying that distraction. It was one of the few reasons why Itachi hated classrooms, at least the ones that focused on theory rather than practice, it was also one of the few reasons why he had graduated so early from his own academy, even during times of war having a child at the age of 6 as a ninja was uncommon, the ninja villages would normally wait until they were at least 8 or 9 before they sent the kids out on the battle field, but Itachi had put all his effort and energy into getting out of school and out onto the battlefield where he could do something more productive with his life.

Now, sitting in a classroom with his master was a rather dull activity and only the occasional spark of information from the teacher was making it bearable.

As for his master, Itachi and Louise had come to an understanding of their positions during their conversation last night. He was a familiar, a servant for the most part but when he was teaching her he would be the master, the sensei. It was during each of these times that they could ask anything of the other as long as it was within reason and they would try to perform to the best of their abilities.

Itachi didn't mind the chores and the cleaning seeing as he was a very tidy person to begin with, so he had always enjoyed the rigors of good house work, Louise on the other hand was going to be in for it the moment the afternoon rolled around. They had chose the afternoon for their master student sessions mainly because Louise still had classes to take, and while Itachi was normally a early riser due to his training he was willing to acclimate himself to a more end of day training schedule, at least his muscles wouldn't atrophy from sitting around all day and he still liked the midday classes held outside the classroom where he could bask in the wonders of nature.

Letting out a small bored sigh Itachi tuned himself back into the classroom in time to hear that Kirche woman again criticizing his masters abilities in magic. That was another thing that he and Louise had discussed. It was a familiar's job to protect and serve their master and from the way Louise's head was bowed in bitter embarrassment of the woman's accusations he could rightly guess that it was some form of verbal attack.

Eager to spice up the boring classroom, Itachi let lose a little killing intent the fire mage's way, silencing her little smear campaign handily. The woman audibly gulped and turned her attention to the Uchiha.

"You call her Louise the Zero when she actively uses magic" Itachi spoke smoothly "Why?"

"T-that's because she's a failure in everything she tries, her success rate in magic is zero" Kirche defended herself, sweating slightly at the mild killing intent.

"She may be a failure in calling on a certain element, but she can clearly make explosions." Itachi rebutted. "I once fought an enemy who used explosions in battle, he was infamous for a battle where he leveled an entire mountain side on an attacking force of over two hundred warriors. None survived." He nodded to Louise easily. "Louise causes explosions that can clear a room with even the simplest spells, what if she were to focus all of her energy into a much larger spell? What if she became a warrior who focused on using nothing but those spells?" A small smirk formed on the Uchiha's lips as most of the room's occupants aside from himself and Louise turned a shade of white, even the teacher and stoic Tabitha had a slight paling of their cheeks at the though of the girl using that much power as a weapon.

"She also summoned me, so she clearly can use magic to summon a familiar, so she didn't fail in that regard." Itachi closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair strangely satisfied with raising his masters self esteem in the eyes of her peers. It was another thing that bugged the Uchiha. Needlessly harassing a fellow human simply to make yourself look better, a despicable act that he would not stand for in the least. He could feel the glowing pride Louise was sending his way as the rest of the class shut up about Louise's abilities, they didn't want to tempt her anger and perhaps make her try to overload a much larger spell to test out the Uchiha's idea.

Louise on the other hand began laughing maniacally, rubbing her hands together like an evil genius which made more than a few of the students scoot father away from her in their seats.

Oh if they only knew what they'd be practicing later that day...

_**-ooo-**_

"We're here." Itachi grunted, walking into the testing grounds he had been pointed to earlier by Siesta the maid.

"Wow, I never knew they had these here in such an out of the way place." Louise looked around the clearing curiously, several human shaped test dummies and an assortment of tools were lying about, along with that the area had a small pond in one corner and several trees lining its edge. You could clearly see several long gashes and pits in the tree where an errant spell or stray magic had impacted it, all of the scars looked rather old though, a testament to how little the testing ground was used.

"I was told this was where the more dangerous spells are practiced by the older students." Itachi replied, walking over to one of the dummies to test and see if it would stand up to one of his punches. It did, much to his approval. "First" He turned back to Louise. "I'm going to help you find your internal power. Then, we will focus on applying that power, understood?"

Louise snapped to attention at his commanding tone. "Y-yes...Sensei?" Itachi nodded, that was another thing they had agreed upon, if he was going to teach this girl like a ninja he was damn well going to be treated like one and one of the biggest things about a student-teacher relationship was proper respect between them.

"Good." He nodded, sitting down in a cross legged position. "Join me here in the same position and clear you mind. That is the first step to finding your inner power."

Doing as her 'sensei' commanded the girl sat in a similar position next to the man, the soft grass below them providing a decent cushion, however a curious question ran through her head. "I thought you said that magic was an external power?"

"It is." he responded. "However all power starts within the body, your affinity is within every fiber of your being, that affinity allows you to draw upon that kind of energy from around you, you find the source of your power and you find a way to control it, now close your eyes and clear your mind."

The girl did as she was told, albeit reluctantly. Closing her eyes the girl was met with the blackness of the back of her eyelids. The next step was clearing her mind, which she was having a difficult time doing, her mind kept wandering and every time she would twitch or do something the wrong way Itachi would call her on it, his Sharingan reading her body language and knowing when she was thinking about something.

Finally after almost three hours Itachi was able to get the girl to clear her errant thoughts. "Alright, now that your thoughts are clear, search within yourself" He stopped for a moment to think of how to word the next part so that she could understand. "For me, my power is a glowing red orb of energy within my core. For you it could be anything." He placed a hand on her forehead and channeled chakra into his hand. the warming feeling of his chakra making the girl shiver slightly as the energy filler her up. "All people have chakra and chakra pathways in their body, this includes you magi to some degree, though most don't have much more than what is needed to survive. However, from what I can tell at a glance, you magi have developed a way to draw upon the chakra of nature to perform magic." He increased the amount of chakra in his hand slightly. "I'm sending my chakra into your body along your chakra pathways so that you can feel where it's going. This technique is used by teachers of ninja to help aspiring ninja access their chakra. Follow my chakra and search within yourself to find the source of your powers."

As the lesson was progressing the young girl hung off of every word the man spoke, feeling his energy roll through her body like a calm wave made her body tingle in places she never knew existed. A deep blush went over her face as she felt some of his chakra warm an 'area' that she didn't expect it to but what was truly strange was that certain places would be warmer than others. A frown crossed her face as she felt these places out, strangely her arms, legs and chest were slightly cooler than her stomach and head. Focusing on her head first she followed that warm feeling until she reached pure blackness. Looking around the girl was surprised that she couldn't feel any magical power around her, that left only her stomach, which was both strange and fitting all at the same time.

The teachers of the school had spoken of a theoretical magical core during their classes, so it only seemed right that the core of her magic would be in the core of her body.

Slowly following the energy in her system to her center the girl was surprised to feel a warming sensation flow through her body as she grew closer, until a mental representation of her body finally appeared in a pure white room.

Glancing around, the girl's curiosity rose as her gaze fell upon a single dark point in the room, approaching the thing filled her with a sense of power and wonder. Staring down at the thing she realized that it was a large sphere of pure...darkness? It wasn't black or any other color she could describe in her language or any other, it simply seemed to...lack a color, as if if was a...void. "So it's true" Louise murmured, watching as the ball of non-color seemed to rotate and pulse as she grew near. She reached a tentative hand out to touch the orb before she pulled her hand back, looking around the room apprehensively for a moment, wondering if this was really such a good idea.

"Don't hesitate." A voice echoed around the room that she was in, causing the girl to jump in surprise. To her shock it actually sounded like Itachi's voice, which was compounded moments later when she again felt that warming feeling from the man's chakra.

Shivering once again at the odd feeling the girl reached out cautiously to touch the orb, it's spinning and pulsing increasing to near whirring speeds. As soon as her first finger touched the orb it's movement completely stopped before the pulsing of the orb magnified until it's beating was a rhythmic thump-thump as if it was a beating heart, it's energy flowing over the girl as her mind was pushed outside her body.

Itachi stared at Louise for those few moments where her hand touched the orb, feeling the pulsing of her energy as it flared out. Honestly, the man was surprised that she had such power within her, from the looks of her peer's chakra, they weren't much more developed than an average academy student graduate except for that Tabitha woman and Kirche who felt to be mid to high chunin...but Louise's... it felt on par with most low ranking Jonin!

"Ahh!" The Uchiha hissed in pain as he drew his hand back, a backlash of chakra from the girls body assaulting their link and accidentally burning the palm of his hand. Sending a bit of chakra to the limb to numb the pain the man watched as Louise opened her eyes, the pupils dancing with barely controlled power, a small ring of chakra encircling her form and chakra energy arcing off of her body. The girl's mouth parted in a smile of triumph for but a moment before all of it seemed to disappear as her eyes rolled up into her head, the energy she had tapped into sputtering out and dissipating into the air.

Itachi reached a hand out and caught the girl before she could slump back and strike her head on the ground, it wouldn't do to give herself a concussion the first time she tried to activate her powers now would it?

Looking down at the girls unconscious form Itachi could only chuckle at the marvel that this girl had just achieved. Not many people could tap into their chakra the first time doing that particular exercise and even then they couldn't bring out the amount of power that she had. Chuckling again the man hefted the feather-light girl into his arms and disappeared in a swirl of leaves, leaving the testing ground in a shunshin back to Louise's room.

_**-ooo-**_

Louise's eyes snapped open groggily before a groan escaped her lips as she felt a small migraine in the back of her head. "Ughh, what the heck happened?" She sat up and looked around to see that she was in her room, lying on her bed.

"You passed out." Itachi spoke up next to her, causing the girl to jump in surprise. "You suffered a mild case of chakra exhaustion when you tapped into your chakra."

Louise frowned for a moment before her eyes widened as she remembered the sheer POWER she had flowing through her, she could still feel the tingling in her bones from the energy that had course through her.

"Good work by the way." The girl looked up into Itachi's face to see a small smirk on his face. "You accessed your chakra on the first try, it usually takes 2 or 3 tries for most students to tap into their chakra."

The girls face lit up slightly at the praise, most of the teachers and students of the school only pointed out her flaws, but Itachi had just acknowledged that she had done something right for once, and not only that but she had done it well. A small bit of warmth flared up in her chest as she realized that she had accessed so much power on her first try, if this was what Itachi could teach in a day...a shiver went up Louise's spine, thinking about what should could learn if she kept at it.

"It's curious." Itachi spoke up, drawing the girls attention. "It turns out you have a lot of chakra in your body, on par with most low ranking Jonin actually.

Louise's eyes widened at that, just how the hell did she not know she had that kind of power in her body? "H-how?"

Itachi sent a curious glance her way, the girl seemed genuinely surprised at the revelation. "Remember when I said that Ninjutsu and magic are different?" A nod answered him. "I never said that they don't use the same energy. Ninjutsu uses internal Chakra while Magic requires external chakra, where I come from most people call what most magi do here, Senjutsu." He gestured around the room. "Pulling chakra from the environment to power a jutsu or in your case, magic." He paused to let that sink in for the girl for a moment before starting again. "Where I come from sage training is a very esoteric art, only a select few ever complete sage training, and even fewer ever master it. To harness sage chakra, you must find a balance between your internal chakra and external chakra, a perfect balance." He chuckled here. "You create large explosions using external chakra with hardly any effort, to harness such power you have to have an equal yet opposite internal chakra to match it."

Louise frowned at that. "If I have so much power, why cant I perform spells normally, even if I have an affinity for void it shouldn't blow up in my face like that."

Itachi rubbed his chin absently in thought. "My guess? Control, it showed when you let all of your chakra out at once during the exercise, you have no control over your power, you overload everything and make it explode. I'm surprised you haven't learned how to control your magic from your teachers, that should be the first thing they teach before they go on to practical application."

"The school...doesn't teach anything like that..." That stopped Itachi in his tracks.

The room was quiet for a moment before Itachi spoke. "You mean to tell me that this school teaches potentially deadly techniques and doesn't teach the students the proper way to control them?" A scowl crossed his face when the girl nodded. "Fools, every single one of them. Tomorrow we're going to focus on chakra control exercises and hopefully help you control the external chakra you're using"

And they would, ohhh they soooo totally would.

_**-ooo-**_

Morning classes came quickly and were as boring as yesterday's however two things were different.

One. No one picked on Louise... at least not overtly, sure they snickered a bit when she failed the spell her that her teacher had her do, however that was tempered by the second thing.

Two. Itachi was no longer bored, but neither was he amused. His eyes were a slight glare that bored into the teacher of the class, sure no one there knew what killing intent was but Itachi leaked just enough to make everyone uncomfortable, clearly he was still a little miffed about how the teachers taught here. Hey, he might not like classrooms that teach boring subjects but even among the copycat Uchiha, Itachi prided himself on his mastery and control of his chakra and techniques. Both in his social life and on the battlefield, sure he had lost it a few times and was a bit corrupted by a certain blonde haired Jinchuriki at times but Itachi saw the inherent flaw of not teaching a student exactly HOW something worked rather than telling them _"This, is what you do, repeat it."_ That doesn't TEACH anything, that's just turning humans into mindless drones who can only recite things they've memorized over and over rather than thinking for themselves on how to use an ability. It allowed no progress, no free thought to be made, it was simple repetition of something you learned rather than something you had mastered. The Uchiha vowed to make certain that Louise didn't end up forming those bad habits with his own brand of Hel- training...

Letting out an uncharacteristic little chuckle, the man already had a regime for the young pinkette to follow.

_**-ooo-**_

Evening found Louise sitting cross legged against one of the large trees in the training ground, a single leaf stuck to her forehead. This was her 15th try doing this particular exercise and the first time she had gotten it right. Sadly, attempt's one thru fourteen had ended in spectacular failure. Itachi had told her before she even attempted the first time that she would have to consciously draw upon her chakra on her own this time...that had ended in... well a mild success in Itachi's opinion. Sure, she had pulled her chakra out, but like before she had drawn too much and passed out. Thirty minutes later and a little help from Itachi had the girl back up and at it. This time, with a small hint from Itachi telling her that instead of trying to grab all her power at once like she did when she touched the spiraling ball of her void chakra, the man recommended that she merely touch the chakra for but a moment then pull back.

This resulted in a resounding success, at least for a little while. Louise had managed to access her chakra to some degree, at least enough to where she could try her hand at the leaf sticking exercise.

Now, Louise's first attempt had totally disintegrated the leaf, her chakra actually vaporizing the thing before it could even fall, The same happening with leaves 2 thru 8 as well, leaf 9 had shown a larger improvement in that it only burned a little bit and actually stuck for a moment. Leaf 10 thru 14 had shown small improvements until finally on the 15th the little bastard had finally stayed.

Itachi assumed that since the girl was trained in drawing natural chakra from her surrounding then she had at least some skill in gathering some form of chakra, though her own chakra probably felt foreign to the magic wielding girl.

Speaking of natural chakra, Itachi was somewhat concerned about that particular revelation. The young man had spoken to Jiraiya once before on the subject and had read books on the subject himself to better his ninja studies and he had remembered that when you take in too much nature chakra you'd transform into a statue of the animal you were trying to learn from, for Jiraiya it would have been a toad statue. But that fact wasn't important at the moment, what was important was that every single mage in the school was using natural chakra like it was nothing and weren't suffering any negative effect. When he had brought up this thought with Louise, she had surprised him with the knowledge that every mage used a focus for their magic, for Louise and most students it was a wand, while some used a staff or sword, or in some outlandish cases (Like Guiche's) some would use things like a rose or some kind of talisman that they related with enough to focus their magic through it.

That focus allowed a mage to externalize the chakra and use it like one would a chakra blade and send the chakra down the length of the focus, allowing the user to craft the chakra into whatever they wanted as long as they had the affinity for it.

This was something that had impressed Itachi, since what these mage's were doing here was something that could have made almost any human in his world a ninja. All any civilian would need was a stick of wood and they could easily use jutsu of mid genin rank or higher to defend themselves if they wanted to.

But such was hindsight and his revelation would go unnoticed in the shinobi world.

Here in this world however... He could definitely use this to help the girl in training her chakra, and his own for that matter.

for three days that was their training schedule; wake up in the morning, go to classes, take lunch then evening classes, then finally spent the next four hours until dusk honing Louise's chakra control.

On the fourth day Itachi had noticed a marked improvement on the girl's control, enough even to try out the simplest jutsu in the academy; the clone jutsu. Itachi had shown the girl the twelve handsign's the day before and surprisingly she took to them readily enough, if a bit slowly. Apparently the girl was a genius when it came to written work as she had been forced to raise her grades in lack of her magic ability.

Channeling chakra while going through four handseals (For maximum control) the pinkette spoke the technique's name.

"Bunshin no Jutsu!" The clearing filled with smoke from the overpowered technique and coughing was heard coming from the center of ground zero.

"You (cough) put too(cough) much (cough) chakra into that

"I'm (cough) still learning(cough) sue me."

As the smoke cleared the two looked around expectantly only for their eyes to fall upon a nearly dead, deformed looking clone of Louise, sitting there unmoving and staring blankly back at them with empty eyes.

Louise shivered as she looked at her clone, it wasn't something she'd normally feel intimidated by, but seeing how dead looking her own body looked on the thing disgusted her for some odd reason, but most of all she was disgusted in herself, after four days of preparation she still couldn't do anything right, even jutsu, which was her last resort to impress her peers, her family...and most of all...her mother.

Thoughts of the legendary woman that was her mother floated through the girls head. Her mother, The famed Karin Désirée de La Vallière or what she was better known as during her time as a knight of Tristain; Karin of the Heavy Wind, named such for her extremely powerful square class wind magic, the strongest in her countries military history if memory served. But looking at the dead...thing at her feet, the girl could only feel despair at how worthless it all seemed, how pathetic she must appear to the man who was teaching her, who said he had mastered this technique before he had even graduated as a genin at age 7. It was pathetic, it was unacceptable, it was...

"Impressive."

W-what? The girl nearly face planted, in her haste to disown herself she had completely disregarded Itachi's view on the matter. When she actually got a good look at the man she could only see...approval in his eyes...what?

Itachi chuckled at her dumbfounded expression, now many would consider the Uchiha to be a harsh taskmaster when it came to jutsu, seeing as his entire family were basically jutsu whores anyway, but he could give credit where credit was due, especially when he had such a spiritually broken student to begin with, so seeing as a little peeping up was in order the older man explained his reasoning to the girl.

"It's impressive, because many ninja don't even get a body the first time they try this jutsu." He pointed to the last bit of smoke that was disappearing from view. "Most ninja barely even get smoke and yet you got a half way decent look-a-like, sure it's practically dead looking but even then it could still be mistaken for you it was dark enough and sometimes that's all a ninja needs."

Blushing under the mans praise Louise didn't know how to react when he arrowed the point home. "In fact even I only got a body to appear on my third try, most of the class I was in only got it on the fifth or more; that is something only prodigy's are able to do."

Louise's face went red as it heated up, she felt light as a feather as he spoke about how good a first try she had made, it made her tingle in places she didn't know she could tingle.

Meanwhile Itachi was patting himself on the back with a small smirk on his lips at getting through the girls somber attitude, he had noticed it the moment the girls eyes landed on her near dead clone; it was a look he had seen several times on a certain blonde Jinchuriki after the kid had failed in his training. Itachi thought back fondly on his ANBU days in the village, he had spent most of his young life as a monster on the battlefield, doing things that would have made lesser men quit being a ninja entirely. But, that left Itachi with a strange view on life when it came to how he saw others. Instead of focusing on why he wasn't good at something, Itachi always had to look past that and focus on what he was good at, pushing himself into the ground, harder and harder and harder just so he could live another day.

That mindset had come into play when he had found a young Naruto crying in the middle of the park, having failed his clone jutsu much like Louise had, trying to comfort the boy had proven useless and showing him the proper way to make a clone hadn't helped him either. Itachi knew exactly why too, the kid's chakra was so massive, it was like comparing a fire hose to an average ninja's eyedropper and that was overloading the jutsu, Louise had a similar problem, though her's was more manageable seeing as she only had low to mid jonin level chakra. Which, while a hassle, could be overcome eventually, Naruto sadly didn't have that luxury...however, Itachi had done something else to help the young boy that in hindsight probably helped him along more in his ninja career than anything else.

A smirk crossed his lips when he remembered exactly WHAT he had taught the boy. Itachi had taught the boy the one thing that Itachi knew he could accel at.

Stealth.

It was one of Itachi's most useful skills, being in ANBU honed that skill to near frightening levels and Itachi had shown Naruto the basics of it. Itachi later found out that Naruto had started using his stealth in pranks around the village and could only laugh knowing that his fellow ANBU brethren would have just that much more of a time trying to find the little bundle of energy. Hell, Itachi had heard from one of his contacts that the impressionable little brat had actually painted the Hokage monument in the middle of broad daylight in a village full of alert ninja wearing a bright orange tracksuit, a feat Itachi could quite honestly say that he'd never would have been able to pull off. If people had actually played towards the brats strengths he could have easily been one of history's best infiltrators and assassins, hell, if the kid could have controlled his spastic behavior and actually applied his time and effort into what he was actually good at he could have become a legend long before Itachi had died. Itachi chuckled slightly, not that the blonde really needed it, he was already well on his way to becoming a legend when he had fought the lad and left him Shisui's Sharingan.

And now there was Louise, looking the same as that little blonde child he had stumbled upon in that playground all those years ago, he could see the same personality in the girl as in him; brash, quite the loudmouth and confident in herself to an extent...at least until someone came along to put the girl down for no better reason to make themselves look better; It really was a shocking parallel to the blonde's situation.

Only this time Itachi was going to be actively teaching this girl, he would play to her strengths, he would mold her into what she had always wanted to be; someone who had the respect and admiration of her peers, and a peerless ability to take pride in after being put down all her life.

Though Itachi made sure not to over inflate her ego, but he wasn't going to leave out his praise either when she had clearly done something that he had not when he had first attempted it. Now the girl was almost a puddle at his feet with how she had just melted under his praise, it frankly disgusted Itachi that the staff and students had pushed this girl so far that even a little bit of praise elicited such a reaction from the girl.

What Itachi didn't know was that everyone did that because she came from a very prominent family with very powerful mage's and it was only them comparing her to her parents and siblings shadows, but that was for another day. Now that Louise could actually perform a jutsu he was going to drill it into her head until she could; after all, the clone jutsu was hella useful even for an ANBU like himself, it was basically his goto when he needed a distraction, that combined with his Genjutsu alone made him a demon in a fight.

Why he hadn't thought to use it during his fight with Guiche still crossed the young Uchiha's mind, but such was hindsight, he guessed he was still a bit weirded out by his second chance at life that it hadn't really registered for him that he could still use ninja techniques to mop the floor with everyone's sorry ass, though he was still disconcerted with how his Sharingan had reacted during that fight.

After the fight Itachi had found out that his Sharingan had advanced to the next stage of his eyes: The Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. It was a force to be reckoned with to be sure, and he'd never really go blind from it, but since he hadn't exchanged eyes with his brother the effects of using the highest level of Sharingan took a massive toll, even on his newly freed reserves.

Which was kind of annoying really since he couldn't just bust out a Amaterasu if he needed it, or even a Tsukiyomi, though if he was just fighting one opponent that wouldn't really hurt him much anyway. And the fact that it had activated on it's own was even more irritating, it wasn't like he flinched or anything, the mark forced his eyes to act on their own like a defense mechanism...which, come to think of it was pretty much the definition of a flinch anyway...It also didn't help that those golem things were actually pretty fast and he'd been attacked from his blind spot; obviously he wasn't a Hyuuga so he didn't have eyes in the back of his head and by the time he heard anything the hunk of metal had already closed the distance with him. So, in a way it was a flinch after all...he had underestimated the little brat and had used more force than necessary, though he had to admit that seeing the man piss himself in terror was kind of amusing, a sentiment Louise had shared when the topic was brought up.

POOF

Panning back into the training session Itachi found himself staring at a slightly less than dead clone of Louise, it basically looked like a zombie, but with slightly darker skin tone.

"Hn." The Uchiha mused. "It's still dead looking but could a make a passable decoy in the dark, good work."

For the rest of the day Itachi had Louise continue to make clones. It was a very slow process and by the end of the day she had barely made any progress at all, but to someone who had been stuff at the bottom rung of the ladder for most of their life, any amount of progress was something to be cherished.

And cherish it she did, at least until she passed out again from chakra exhaustion from using too much chakra in her jutsu.

Itachi raised a single eyebrow as he caught the girl mid fall, yet again... Apparently she'd have to focus on more chakra control before she could take the next step in her training.

"Ungg." A small groan from the girl in his arms forced a little chuckle between the mans lips. Yes, he was going to work her into the ground as much as physically possible, and she was going to benefit from it greatly.

Who knows, maybe she'll mature a bit more now that her body was connected to her chakra... she'd probably be a solid 9 after a little grow...

Itachi stopped. Shook his head to clear his mind of those thoughts and continued walking, apparently spending all his time around Kisame when he was reading that damnable orange book of his had affected Itachi more than he thought.

Stupid perverted fish men...

_**-ooo-**_

_**Ok that's it for this chapter, some character development and training for Louise and Itachi, I know it's not much but I've just been feeling really really suckish (is that even a word?) lately and it's messing with my writing drive :/**_

_**Yes Louise is going to be using chakra along with her magic, she probably wont be a fighter like Itachi, but she wont be a glorified bulls eye/glass cannon like she is in the anime/manga/Light novels.**_

_**Also Louise will probably be using some jutsu as well, but it wont be anything more than the academy 3 until she has them mastered enough that Itachi feels comfortable teaching her something more dangerous, though it will be amusing having Louise work some jutsu in front of her peers eventually just to fuck with them.**_

_**Till then, Hazard out.**_


	4. Chapter 4

_**I ain't got much to say except sorry this took so long, read the bottom AN for more on this, suffice it to say I needed some comedy to spice things up.**_

_**Fic o the day:**_ Naruto the Seal Slinger by LightSeeker67. _**This story is surprisingly awesome, it's got wonky OC characters and Naruto is pretty awesome in this story, I'm also a big fan of the story because Kushina eventually joins the party and she can finally be with Naruto as a mom should be :D The powers are unique as well. I can say I would have never thought of something so complex as the world that this is set in. Oh. And the fact that I got name dropped in the latest chapter has nothing to do with me recommending this story at all... nothing at all...**_

_**Ok aside from the blatant lies this is a multi dimension traveling fic and they are currently romping around in the several generations Post FMA:BH verse. So enjoy the amazing story so far.**_

_**Word/s of the day: bung·hole. n. **_(I've always found this word amusing)

_**1. The hole in a cask, keg, or barrel through which liquid is poured in or drained out.**_

_**2. Vulgar Slang The anus.**_

_**Song of the day: **_Rabbit Killer - Imaginationland _** This song is both awesome and boss, you know the drill.**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Familiar of Zero, those are both owned by the people who own them. Obviously.**_

_**-ooo-**_

"Talking"

_'Thinking'_

**"Different Language"**

Jutsu/magic spells

_**-ooo-**_

_**Chapter 4: Sharp and Pointy**_

A single candle flickered in the dim moonlight, casting shadows around the room where two men sat, one old and wise, the other bald and nearly as wise...

"Are you sure?" The older man questioned.

"Yes Headmaster, I have checked the records man times, it is as I explained."

"Hmmm." The headmaster, a wizened old man by the name of Osmond, a square class mage of incredible power and wisdom sat back thoughtfully in his chair, the desk in front of him separating him from one of his most trusted teachers. Jean Colbert, coincidentally the same man who had presided over the familiar summoning ritual that had brought Itachi here in the first place. "So a Gandalfr has appeared after all these years... and summoned by a Vallière as well. Perhaps it's fitting that way I guess, especially when you consider which of the Vallière summoned him; this, Itachi Uchiha."

"Yes, I've seen the man walking the halls at night." Colbert shivered. "He exudes this aura that imposes on the very psyche of those around him. Not to mention he used a powerful triangle level fire spell in his duel with young Gramont."

"Ah." The headmaster tapped his chin in thought. "That Guiche fellow? He's a good student, if a bit foppish for my liking."

"Headmaster! For all intents and purposes Miss Vallière has a mage for a familiar, doesn't this concern you at all?"

Osmond raised a hand to calm the angry teacher. "I heard you before Jean, and I am as curious as you to the nature of our newest familiar on campus. Itachi Uchiha; A curious name don't you think, certainly not one that is common among the rabble or the nobility."

"You think he could be from a different country?"

Osmond stood and walked to the large pane glass window to look down upon the full glory of the castle grounds, particularly a small training ground that hadn't been used much in recent years... until a few short days ago. Shaking his head the headmaster spoke. "No, Jean. That man is something different. He has been teaching the young Vallière his own brand of magic. I have seen them training in the old Sophomore testing ground. The man is a curiosity I must admit but I doubt he'd be much of a threat unless provoked."

Jean's eyebrows rose when he heard the man was teaching Louise magic but kept quiet until the headmaster finished. "How can Miss Vallière learn magic? I thought she was incapable of such things, that they would explode in her face at every chance?"

The older man nodded. "That was what I assumed as well, but I have seen different, she has already learned an illusion of some sort, cast by forming magic with the hands." The headmaster went through the several handseals he had witnessed the young girl using, slowly and from memory having seen her practice it several times already through a telescope. "From what I can gather the man's people use an inner force similar to our own magic, which is as you know an external force."

Jean blinked for a moment before his jaw dropped. "Wait...you mean he can use _IT_ sir?"

Osmond nodded gravely. "That is exactly what I'm saying."

"But..."

"We both know the implications Jean, not a word of this to anyone, not even the other teachers." The headmaster waved a hand over his shoulder dismissing the teacher.

"Yes headmaster..." Colbert bowed slightly before leaving, closing the door behind him as he went.

Osmond stood in front of his window staring down upon that training field a dozen thoughts at the forefront of his mind. "So not only is the newest familiar a Gandalfr, but a user of chakra as well? Then he must be from... Hmmm, the times ahead seem interesting indeed..."

_**-ooo-**_

The dull clump of sandal on stone echoed through the staircase that Itachi Uchiha found himself, he had just brought Louise in from training and found that she had passed out and was in something of a chakra exhaustion induced sleep. He needed food for the young girl to rouse her and begin training the next day and there was only one place to find food at this our of the night.

The Kitchens.

Rounding the last curve of the staircase found him face to face with Siesta of all people. "Excuse me" His tone low and reserved. "But could I get a small meal for my master, she's exhausted and needs her energy restored."

"Ah." The maid in question blinked for a moment, too stunned that she was inches away from the man who had single handedly beaten a noble in a duel. She knew he had used some sort of magic to do it but Itachi was a Familiar, not a mage. So anything he did would be something entirely unique... at least that's what she thought. The head chef... not so much. "I...I'll see what I can do." Siesta stuttered uncertainly, turning her back on the man, just now realizing how close she was, she could practically still smell the dirt and fresh trees on the man, it sort of suited him in a way, made him seem... earthy and sultry... Siesta blinked again, realizing how that sounded in her head and unable to stop the small blush that formed on her cheeks as she hurried into the kitchens.

Itachi meanwhile was oblivious to the young woman's thought's, at least the ones she had for him. _'She's nervous' _ He noted absently, the woman's normally comfortable posture was rigid as she walked into the kitchen. Itachi found out a moment later, walking into the kitchen after he heard hushed voices.

"Get out." A burly man growled, turning his attention away from Siesta, who had been the source of the whispers. "I ain't got no place in this kitchen for a mage."

"I am so sorry Mr. Itachi." Siesta bowed. "Marteau here isn't very...accommodating towards the nobility."

Marteau snorted, like what she'd said was a joke.

Itachi blinked owlishly at the blatant dislike towards the mage's coming from the bear of a man. However, instead of annoyance, Itachi felt a curious thought come to mind. "Why then-" he began, leveling the man with a raised eyebrow. "-do you work in a castle full of nobles, that seems counter productive to your beliefs?" It was a reasonable question and he got in his opinion an even more reasonable answer.

"They pay well." Marteau stated bluntly. "If the pay wasn't good I would be in some other restaurant somewhere."

Itachi nodded, it was an answer that his ninja upbringing could understand, hell he was taught from birth by his parents about the value of money and hard work, it was a surprising work ethic set by the clan known first and foremost as being copy cats and thieves.

But such was life and Itachi had heard and experienced stranger occurrences, his current predicament of being stuck in an entirely new world as a servant to a pink haired midget mage being near the top of the list. But again, such was life and he rather liked the quiet of this new life over his old life anyway. Quite frankly his old life sucked, sucked hard.

And while normally Itachi would have probably just knocked the annoying man out and took what he needed, Itachi knew that wouldn't win him many friends in the long run and he needed quite a few of those if he was going to get settled into this new life comfortably, he was still sore he had to leave behind his friends and comrades in ANBU after the massacre. Those brave few souls who had actually taken the time to get to know the then boy had been some of his best friends, Shunsui had been his best and one of his only friends outside the ANBU, but then...yeah that whole debacle was what lit the powder keg that was the Uchiha Massacre. Not that anything they could have done would have kept it from blowing at one point near in the future anyway.

So compared to this minor annoyance, his past seemed light years ahead of this on the annoyance scale.

"Why do you not like nobles?" Itachi asked, his voice soft but firm enough to be a demand if he had raised his tone slightly.

"I don't know what rock you've been living under." The older man growled. "But Nobles aren't the best people to be around, hell you fought one of the nicer ones. That Guiche fellow might be a two timing bastard but he was actually a hard worker and he tended to leave us well enough alone." The man's gaze darkened. "Others aren't so considerate."

"So you speak from personal bias on a select minority while alienating the innocent majority?" The dry tone in which he spoke annoying the bear of a man in front of him.

"What would you know?" He growled. "If yer asking about this then you don't know the kind of life we have to deal with on a daily basis."

The Uchiha and sighed, scratch that, the man needed to learn a lesson about why you don't say that to a ninja, especially an ANBU ninja.

"In my village." He spoke evenly. "We did not elevate people by birth but by skill. When you join our military you start out at the bottom and work towards the top." He leveled a bored glare on the man. "I graduated from our military academy at the age of six, made my first kill at seven and rose to the second highest military position you can hold in my village at the age of thirteen. I have been on the battlefield for all of my life, while you sit here in relative comfort and complain about having a bad life." He softly scoffed at the notion. "I was also a clan heir, held to the highest standard and from nearly my birth I was forced to be the best, if I wasn't I would have been disowned and my younger brother my replacement and yet you complain of a few annoying insects that might look down on you and treat you badly?" He shook his head. "Pathetic."

Marteau frowned as Itachi spoke, one thing sticking out to him more than anything else. "What sort of village forces children to be soldiers?"

"It is not forced." Itachi spoke smoothly. "The powers we use, the "magic" you call it, can be used by anyone in our village if you are trained from birth which is why most children are given the choice to join or you have a large enough capacity later in life to learn. Even you could use my peoples abilities if you had the reserves for it."

The two servant's blinked in confusion as that fact hit home.

"R-really?" Siesta stuttered. "I could learn magic?" The older man next to her nodded as well to indicate if Itachi was speaking truthfully or not.

Itachi activated his Sharingan for a moment , looking the two up and down for a moment before shaking his head, deactivating his Sharingan. "You most likely would be unable to learn them at your age, the chakra coils in your body which contain the chakra needed to form magic are too hardened to do much with them, if you had trained a bit more as a child you could probably do some minor things but as of now, no."

Siesta looked down at that, a chance to perform magic with her own hands lost because she didn't do some sort of training as a child? That actually hurt a bit more than she thought it would.

Marteau looked away, scowling at the calm dismissal, like he was unworthy of the task.

"However." Both servants snapped their gaze to the Uchiha who had his eyes on Siesta. "Your chakra coils haven't hardened entirely like Marteau-san's " He gave her a once over in thought, pulling a small book out of his Akatsuki cloak. It was an ANBU booklet handed to them when they joined. He had kept his when he left the Leaf and carried it around until it was being held together by nothing but pressure on the pages. It was strange that it was now as whole as when he had first acquired it but that was something Itachi had discovered after he had checked his supply pouch and kunai holster. It seemed that everything he'd had on him just prior to his fight with Sasuke had met the same revitalizing forces as he had undergone when he crossed over to this world. So he had a full stock of ninja tools, several scrolls of basic shinobi equipment and this book right here.

Inside the thick little booklet contained an up to date Bingo Book, a reference sheet for all current nobility and politicians, and a few starter courses for any ANBU interested in the field. One of those being the complex art of sealing. Staring down at the cover fondly the man remembered his days taking up the art of sealing, going so far as to ask Jiraiya-sama for pointers during those days he had been stuck on a certain seal.

Itachi was by no means a master, but nearly all ANBU captains were required to have some level of sealing skill, so he'd had to learn up to intermediate level to even become a captain.

Snapping out of his little walk down memory lane the man held the book up. "This book teaches an art known as Fuinjutsu or "Sealing" While most jutsu that I would use is beyond you, most seals take little to no chakra to activate and the rest is simply ink on paper."

"R-really?" The girl's eyes widened in shock, she could really learn how to use magic? Would Itachi teach her?

"Hn." He nodded. "The question is, do you wish to learn?" Itachi asked, he didn't mind teaching the girl fuinjutsu, in fact he felt a sort of kinship with the woman for some odd reason. She was pure, and something of an optimist from the few times he had spoken with her. Besides, he had nothing but time to kill here in this world and teaching her would refresh his own rusty skills in the art which he had sadly let stagnate as he rarely ever used it for anything anymore and that was one thing he wanted to correct before it possibly killed him...again.

"Wh...why wouldn't I?" She asked cautiously, having heard about mages striking deals with demons for certain sorts of power from stories as a child and she didn't want to be attached at the hip by a demon or anything of the sort.

"It's not a weapon for battle." He replied simply. "Only true masters of the art can use it as such, but seals can be very useful for mundane things." He pulled a scroll from his pouch. "For example." He unrolled the scroll to reveal several odd identical symbols in a row. Holding a hand above one of the seals a small puff of smoke filled the air. When the air cleared a large 1X1X1 foot box filled the space that the seal had been a moment before, the scroll underneath the brown container.

"Eh...what is that?" Marteau scrunched his eyebrows at the box, curious at what was inside.

"It is just a few of my supplies." Itachi replied, pulling a kunai knife from within spinning it a couple times the edge catching the light in just the right angle to show how wickedly sharp it was. "But that is unimportant." Sending a bit more chakra into the seal after he had placed the kunai back, the box disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared. "To learn sealing you will have to learn the written language of my people which judging by your language, is much more difficult. Do you still wish to learn."

Siesta looked uncertain, her hands fidgeting together. That is until a meat hook of a hand landed on her shoulder and her eyes looked up into the warm gaze of Marteau. An unspoken conversation seemed to pass between them, something of a familial bond between friends? Itachi mused silently as the two continued. Then the link was broken, the girl turning back with a fire that surprised even Itachi lit in her eyes.

"I'll do it." She responded with finality.

Itachi nodded, he was going to teach Louise fuinjutsu at one point regardless, so maybe it was good he was getting a head start in the art. "I will be teaching my master Sealing as well, so it will most likely be at night after her own training, I can look for you when the training begins if you wish?"

"Um." The head chef held a hand up. "Miss Siesta works at those times, she's one of the late night maids that make sure things are clean in the morning, so she might not be able to join at that time."

Itachi frowned at that for a moment before a light raise of the shoulder signified a shrug from the man. "A simple matter." He held up a rather familiar handseal, muttering "Shadow clone Jutsu!" In a puff of smoke a clone of Itachi stood next to the first, then in a smaller puff of smoke the clone Itachi emerged from the smoke as an almost exact duplicate of Siesta.

"How is this possible?" Marteau gasped, falling back on his butt as his head snapped back and forth between the two 'women'.

The fake Siesta stared at her real counterpart, mimicking her mannerisms even down to her voice as she responded. "It's easy." She spoke cheerfully. "I'm just pretending to be you until you finish studying and then you can get back to your normal work." With a cheery wave the clone disappeared, leaving behind the two gob smacked servants and the original Itachi.

"Will that be sufficient?" The Uchiha questioned, only receiving dumbfounded nods in return. "I trust that I can have some food for my master then?" Another pair of nods answered. Nodding the man waited for the two to come out of their daze and get to work making his master's meal, working with a vigor and excitement that they hadn't had before. In fact Marteau seemed more cheerful towards him as he handed him the food. A look of respect and gratitude from the man was something that Itachi hadn't expected but he welcomed it, after all, who better to be friends with than the hired help? That was one of the easiest ways to infiltrate and assassinate a mark, go through the servants to get to the master. Why not do it anyway just to make his life easier?

Politely thanking the two for their time he made his way back to Louise's room.

Silently walking like only a ninja could back to Louise's room the man idly wondered just why had he offered to teach the maid Fuinjutsu, it wasn't like he owed the girl anything, but it wasn't like he had any overt goals to devote his time to in this world, so why not pass the time by teaching? He had always wanted to teach a genin team, maybe instill some of his values in the children before those values would be put to the test on the battlefield. If the massacre had never happened he might very well have left the ANBU and joined konoha as a Jonin to teach the next generation of genin.

But that was just wishful thinking on his part and this little effort on teaching the two might just scratch his itch on the matter. Hell, perhaps he could start his own hidden village of ninja here in this world? What a novel thought? He would have attributed that flight of fancy to someone like Orochimaru who had grand plans and ambitions but just the thought of teaching a force of people how to be proud ninja of a proud village just peaked his curiosity, perhaps it was a goal for another time, right now he had to get this food back to Louise.

Itachi however blinked in surprise when he found something blocking his path.

Kirche's Salamander familiar to be precise. It was staring at Itachi with a curious gaze, it's eyes holding an intelligence that belied it's clumsy nature. It apparently wanted Itachi to follow it, going even so far as to try and grab him with its teeth.

A small flex of killing intent stopped it cold.

"Bite me and I will hurt you." Was the only threat Itachi felt was necessary as he walked around the lizard who had frozen up in sheer terror. "I will see what you want after I deliver this." He motioned to the food in his hand.

The Lizard nodded, albeit reluctantly. It only took another minute or so to deliver the food to Louise's room. Itachi fed her some of it, though getting the unconscious girl to eat some of the food was rather tricky but still he managed. And, as the girl slept more soundly, her energy returning to her with a full stomach the man turned back to the Salamander who had waited patiently at the entrance of the room for him.

"Now show me what it is you wish me to see." He fell into step behind the Salamander, letting the excitable creature lead the way to a certain room in the west wing of the castle, a place Itachi recognized from his earlier intelligence gathering efforts as Kirche's room. "You wish me to go inside?" He stared down curiously at the fire lizard, who seemed to nod yes to his question. "Very well." He raised a hand and politely knocked on the door.

"Come in." Kirche's voice seemed to purr through the door, setting off Itachi's siren like danger senses.

Opening the door Itachi walked calmly, if a bit cautiously into the room. Ding, another warning bell activated when he noticed how sensuously lit the room was, it looked like something out of a cheesy love novel.

"Welcome Itachi Uchiha." Kirche's form appeared blanketed in moonlight. "To my little love nest." Her body was barely clothed, her form wrapped in a small purple silken nighty that did little to hide her large assets...or much of anything else actually...

DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING

Itachi's eye's widened noticeably, a testament to how bizarre the situation currently was, his danger senses going so far up they hit a ceiling and flat lined. Like a cornered animal Itachi slowly backed away from the _thing _in front of him, knowing that it reacted to movement and one twitch too fast would set it off.

"Itaaachi, why don't you come here and we can get to know each otherbetter?" A cute pout was all it took to send the man stumbling over himself out of the room, taking off at ninja speed back to Louise's room to hide under her bed.

Heart beating a mile a minute the man cowered under the four poster bed that his sleeping master was laying in, breathing heavily. _'They follow me even here, the bane of my existence.'_ The man shivered quietly in the dark room. _'Fangirls.'_

Lightning crashed outside of the window, never mind that there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Back in Kirche's room the girl was stunned to see the man of her desires flee from her like a man possessed, it actually kind of hurt her feminine pride at how easily he resisted her charms. But like the optimistic and fiery women that she was she bounced back from the insult with a grin plastered on her lips.

"So you want to play hard to get eh Itachi?" The grin turned predatory. "Then let the hunt begin."

_**-ooo-**_

Louise was confused. Her confusion stemmed from the fact that her Familiar turned mentor was fidgeting, and not just a little bit she noticed. The man truly was wound up like a spring, eyes glancing over his shoulder occasionally, it wasn't really noticeable unless though you were really paying attention.

"Sensei...are you feeling alright?" Itachi flinched slightly at the sudden question as the two walked away from the castle towards their training ground.

"It's nothing." He assured her. "I've just been concerned about your training, you'll eventually need a weapon if I am to teach you to my fullest ability, and I as well."

"What kind of weapon?" She asked curiously as a group of students passed by them.

Itachi noticed that Kirche was among the group. She flashed a dirty little smirk his way and the man shuddered imperceptibly while averting his eyes. "Something pointy and very very sharp." He said at last.

"A sword then?" The pinkete supplied.

"Hn." The Uchiha nodded, wishing he still had his old Chokuto from his ANBU days, that would have gone a long way to making him feel more secure around _IT _but sadly he'd had to leave the thing behind along with most of his other blood covered possessions to evade Konoha's hunter nin.

"Well." The girl tapped her lip in thought. "Today is Hollow's day so we can go into town to buy you and myself a sword if you wish."

The Uchiha nodded eagerly. Taking a final glance over his shoulder to see Kirche was staring hungrily at his ass. Ignoring the woman as best he could her turned and grabbed Louise's arm. "It would be best if we finished that errand now. Where and how far away is the town?"

"It's...Um through the west gate and three hours by horse?"

"Hn." He pulled the struggling girl behind a building and out of sight of Kirche before using Shunshin to move them to the west gate.

Louise gasped at the change in speed as her feet hit the ground, her stomach heaving in protest. "Wha...what the heck...was that."

"Shunshin." Itachi answer. "High speed movement technique, D-rank." After having explained what the different ranks for techniques there were Louise was surprised to find out that such a useful technique was only a D-rank in skill.

"Could you teach it to me?" The girl almost pleaded with the man, sure it was only a measly D-Rank, but it was a skill with uses that she couldn't even begin to describe, not only that but it was a Jutsu that was undeniable, sure you could pass off a technique like Bunshin as smoke and mirrors, but moving something so quickly as seemingly to teleport it was irrefutable to anyone who witnessed the act.

"You cannot use it right now." He released the girls arm. "You would tear every muscle in your legs trying to perform it, we will need to build them up first, which will take several weeks if not longer."

The girl pouted at the refusal but she was happy about one thing. He had said 'cannot use it _right now_' That meant that he would teach it to her eventually and that it could be taught. She wouldn't get a flat out denial like with other teacher refusing to teach her something just because it would possibly turn into an explosive that would ruin their classroom.

"Three hours west by horse?" The man next to her asked for confirmation.

"Y-yes." Louise nodded, confirming the destination.

"Hn."

Louise watched curiously as the Uchiha took a kneel in front of her only to gape in horror when he motioned for her to climb on his back piggy back style "Oh you cannot be serious..." She groaned when he gave her a blank stare, telling her in no uncertain terms that he'd wait there all day if he had to. His silent glare telling her 'It's faster this way' and 'Just hurry up.' Sighing the girl hopped onto his back, grimacing at the obvious height difference that made her look like a little child in comparison.

"Hold on." He spoke softly, leaning forward ever so slightly to balance the weight on his back before taking off at shinobi speeds out the western gate.

The breath caught in the pinkette's throat as she went from standing still to where the trees were blurring by in her vision. _'Th-this is the speed of a ninja? ...Incredible.'_ Her thoughts were scrambled a moment later when Itachi used a shunshin again when they hit a straight stretch of road so he could see his destination. In a flash they had covered a half a mile in a single step, the man still running as if nothing had happened.

It was a half an hour later that the two walked into town, having cut the normal trip by five sixths to Louise's astonishment, hell Itachi didn't even seem winded, perhaps a little sweaty but not even a single labored breath marred the otherwise stoic man's stance.

Overcoming the shock of her revelation the two proceeded to find a weapon shop for them to peruse the wares. It took another 15 minutes to actually _find _said shop but it was somewhat difficult to find in a city of that size.

"Hmm." Louise stared at a slim short sword in her hand, giving the thing a critical eye then comparing it with Itachi's body size. "This doesn't fit you at all."

"I agree." The weapons dealer behind the counter nodded. "This man looks more like a Longsword user honestly, he's tall and got a bit a muscle on him as well." How the hell the man could tell that when Itachi was wearing his Akatsuki cloak over his normal clothing was a question for another day.

Itachi glanced around the room, flashing his Sharingan for a moment to quickly take in the rooms features to see if any of the swords would be right for him, so far none of them had caught his eye. "Do you have anything single edged, straight, balanced?" He asked.

"Hmmm..." The dealer rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Can't say that I do, single edged swords are somewhat uncommon, straight ones even moreso. Ahh wait!" The man walked around the counter to dig through a barrel of mismatched blades for a moment before pulling out a long single edged falchion style blade that was covered in a thin layer of rust. "It's not much." The man admitted, somewhat embarrassed to have such a weapon in his shop but no one seemed to want to buy the damn thing so he never really got a chance to sell it.

Itachi grabbed the sword when handed to him and inspected the blade, aside from the covering of rust the blade looked in fairly decent shape, running a finger across the edge Itachi was shocked to see a dot of crimson appear on his finger with the barest touch. "It's still sharp." He murmured to himself sucking on his finger until the wound stopped bleeding. Testing it's weight and balance with a couple quick swings showed that it was well balanced and somewhat light. He placed the sheath that the sword came with on his back, sheathing and unsheathing to test its length. It was a bit longer than his old chukuto but he was also near to a foot taller than he used to be so the difference in length was negligible with a bit of practice, the difference in weight was also negligible surprisingly. The sword had almost perfect balance despite being a primarily hacking type sword, it wasn't curved so it couldn't slice to full effectiveness and it wasn't a stiletto type blade that was meant primarily for stabbing. No, this was a happy medium and Itachi was sold on it. "I'll take it."

"Wonderful." The shop keeper clapped his hands together. "That'll be one hundred New Gold." Itachi glanced over at Louise who was surprised at the low cost and paid the man quickly enough, her purse strings still heavy with money because a certain familiar hadn't passed out during his fight with Guiche requiring her to buy an expensive potion to help said familiar...

Elsewhere in the multiverse a poor Japanese student sneezed, having fallen asleep during class only to be scolded by his teacher.

Back with Louise, the unlikely duo were now searching for a weapon that Louise could wield effectively. They had just gone over several smaller weapons like a uniquely designed trench knife that Itachi could have sworn he'd seen before when a voice interrupted them.

"Perhaps the woman needs a rapier?"

The two blinked and looked around.

"Up here you idiots." The sound was coming from Itachi's back, namely his sword.

Itachi grabbed the handle of the weapon and unsheathed it, looking at it curiously. Around the hilt was what looked to be a decorative piece that resembled a visor on a medieval helm. Itachi had assumed it was an aesthetic part of the blade but was shocked slightly to see the visor lift up and start moving, lifting up and down as if it were a mouth.

"You like somethin you see hot stuff?"

Itachi blinked. "It speaks?"

"Of course I speak you brainless idiot." The sword chided him. "For an assassin you don't seem too bright"

A single eyebrow rose at that. "And just how do you know that if I may ask?"

"I can feel it in yah fingers, they're the hands of a trained warrior and I can't hear yah foot steps, that takes a lot a sneakin around to get that good."

"Fair enough" Itachi had to give it to the sword, it was fairly sharp, in more than one way. "What exactly are you? An enchanted blade?"

"Eh, my memory is a bit fuzzy." The sword admitted. "But most people call me Derflinger, I'm a sentient sword, a sword that contains it's own intelligence and wisdom, yah best remember it."

Shrugging at the simple description Itachi focused back on the matter at hand. Itachi stared at the weapon Derflinger had recommended. It was an uncommon choice in his world, very few if any would ever use the oddly shaped blade, in fact many had considered it a relic of a different continent. Itachi wasn't sure that was the case but it still struck him as odd when he studied the weapon proposed.

It could make shallow cuts, but it was more attuned to stabbing, the basket guard protected the hand and balanced the weapon, all in all it was a weapon built for constant attack, pressing the swift advantage of a thinner and lighter sword over something that would usually be more bulky like his chokuto or Derflinger. It was also relatively long to capitalize on the stabbing power of the blade. Itachi had been concerned about the size of the blade in comparison to Louise's size but a glance to a back wall pointed out many similar blades of various sizes that could fit the girls stature.

It was an uncommon choice, but a fitting one in Itachi's opinion.

"A good choice." Itachi agreed with the sword, pulling one of the thin swords off the wall. It was a solid design with an half egg shaped basket that extended a bit farther along the fingers for protection, the blade was shorter than most of the others at around three feet long. But what it sacrificed in length it made up for with it's specialty which the shop keeper was quick to point out.

"Ah, you have a discerning eye there, it's not one of our best pieces but for a midrange priced sword this is one of our best." The man took the blade from Itachi to show off several runes along the weapons side. "These runes are marks of a famous swordsmith from Germania, nobody knows his real name but everyone calls him 'The Spell Sword.' Word has it he creates these blades for a reasonable price so that someone interested and willing will search him out to challenge him to combat for reasons unknown, as far as I've heard the man is undefeated."

At the blank gazes the man sighed. "This sword is enchanted to be used as a wand" He held up the blade and pointed at a small line of runes next to the signature runes." As you can imagine 'The Spell Sword isn't just a moniker, the man was a known warrior at one time who traveled the lands with a blade he had forged himself. It was much like this one and he used it to frightening levels of skill alongside his magic which earned him a title of baron at some point in his life as well as all the land he needed to start his little sword making endeavor."

"So why do you sell these at such a price?" Louise asked curiously. "If it's a work of a well known swordsmith wouldn't it be more reasonable to sell them at an increased cost to make more profit?"

The shop keeper chuckled. "Ah but that's one of the first things that you don't do with a Spell Sword blade. Any blade made by the man is held to a standard, if any merchant tried to sell the blade at an inflated cost it is considered a slight towards The Spell Sword and it can, among other things get you challenged and killed by the man himself. I personally don't mind selling it at the price he set, he's fairly reasonable and it's always a hot ticket item for those who want that sort of thing."

"How much does it cost?" That was the million New Gold question after all.

"1000 New Gold coins." At the shocked expression on at least Louise's face the man reiterated his earlier statement. "Like I said, it's a reasonable deal for a mid priced weapon and you won't find anything better except for something made by a lifelong craftsman."

"I'll take it!" Louise sighed happily dropping the amount specified in the Shopkeepers hand.

"Pleasure doing business with you." The man called back as the two left his building.

Once outside Itachi shunshined them outside the city before picking the girl up as before and rushing back to the Castle. Intent on teaching the girl how to use her weapon and perhaps get a chance to make IT see his _point _of view.

_**-ooo-**_

**AH! see this is what I needed. I've been focusing on serious a lot and I've been bumming myself out, I needed some comedy to get my gears going again.**

**Hope you enjoy Itachi in this chapter and YES I'm teaching Siesta some fuinjutsu, if you don't like it then you can kiss the whitest part of my ass. You guys wanted me to change things up a bit so I'm not just randomly following the story, well there. Siesta will know fuinjutsu, possibly excel at it, who knows? Well mainly I do but I'm not telling so you'll just have to deal with that till then.**

**As for The Spell Sword. Well, again that's something I'm changing up so that the story doesn't get stale just revisiting the same old-same old.**

**Till then brokski's and any variation of that word fit for women and creatures of indistinct sexual orientation.**

**Peace!**


	5. Chapter 5

_**Found out just recently that the Noboru Yamaguchi, the author of Familiar of Zero had passed away last month, to say I was saddened by the loss of another great author before his time and work were finished is an understatement. He created a world, not just a series of characters, but an actual world that could stand on it's own, even if the characters weren't part of the story.**_

_**That takes a special kind of person, a person who sees things differently than others. It's sad to see the potential of a man such as he cut short as it was but all good things must come to an end sometimes, and sometimes they end prematurely. That's life, we just have to live with it.**_

_**Rest in peace man.**_

_**This chapter wasn't proofread as well as previous chapters so if there are any glaring errors I appologise, I was sort of pressed for time on this chapter.**_

_**Don't feel much like a fic of the day, sorry.**_

_**Song/vid of the day:**_ Celtic Woman - Amazing Grace_** Because Feels**_

_**Word/s**__** Quote of the day: **_ "What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal."__-Albert Pike _**See you on the other side Noboru . **_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Familiar of Zero or Naruto, that belongs to Noboru Yamaguchi and Masashi Kishimoto along with the company's who publish them, sponsor them etc etc.**_

_**-ooo-**_

"Talking"

_'Thinking'_

**"Different Language"**

Jutsu/magic spells

_**-ooo-**_

_**Chapter 5: Crawl Before You Can Run**_

Several days passed by in a flash for Itachi in the realm of Halgeknia, in that time several important things happened.

For one, Louise and Siesta met for the first time the night after he had offered to teach the maid.

At first Louise had been livid that he would teach a commoner magic. Itachi however, had explained that unlike Halgenkia's magic, the magic of his world was available to all and if she wanted more training from him then she should just deal with it. Itachi was in his happy place teaching the two and he wouldn't have petty conflict between his two students.

The results of those lessons became somewhat hilarious when it was discovered that Siesta actually already knew the language that Itachi used, something about her great grandfather teaching her his language because she wanted to be a librarian when she grew up, how in the world her great grandfather ended up here and how she went from librarian to maid, Itachi had no idea.

For Siesta, that put her ahead of Louise in terms of ability when it came to sealing. A fact that sent the pink haired girl spiraling into a fit of depression. After all, if a commoner was better able to use magic than a noble then... that was the point where Itachi poked her in the forehead like he had done with his younger brother all those years ago. He might have done it a bit harder than he'd meant to as a small bruise had appeared late but he wasn't going to let the girl go emo on him like his brother had, there was a certain point when being an Uchiha was no longer an excuse.

Surprisingly, the Vallière picked up on his written language within a day or so, memorizing enough to do minor seals. It was safe to say at that point that the girl was an absolute genius when it came to written work and she had enough gumption to work out anything that she was unable to do by writing down every single aspect of the topic she was studying. Siesta on the other hand was a slower learner but did more hands on than when she did learning from a book, both of the girls were complete opposites of each other but were equal when it came to their devotion to their studies.

After Itachi had helped Siesta activate her chakra coils (An event that left the maid stunned near to exhaustion, both from shock at the power that was flowing through her and the strain that power had on her body) he had her working on basic storage seals, which were fairly beginner and would allow her to expand her chakra coils without undue strain. So far she had showed a very promising skill in sealing as her storage seals were very well written and were quite efficient when he had tested them.

The next day was a similar affair, though Louise had found her expertise in sealing almost right from get go when Itachi had, on a whim, taught her something that he'd found highly amusing.

Explosive tags.

Yeah, that had been a bit depressing for the girl who's main magical ability at the time revolved around said explosions. Thankfully, Itachi had explained that the exploding tags she made were a high yield variant that only master seal makers were able to make and those were a great deal more advanced than what even he was capable of creating, that had cheered her up a bit, but he knew he'd have to do something special for the girl to keep her motivated in her training, he really needed to instill some social backbone in the girl.

Another interesting event that happened on that day was what happened to Itachi's clone while he had been impersonating Siesta. A noble, A Count Mott by name showed up at the castle for business. He was an extremely pompous and disgusting parody of the title and had tried to... well, for lack of a better term, he tried to pick Siesta up like a cheap hooker, trying to force his title and importance on her to force her into becoming a mistress of his.

Oh, Itachi was a tad miffed that the man had the gall to try and all but abduct his newest student, in broad daylight, with the worst pick up lines he'd ever heard. But, since he was impersonating Siesta, anything that he tried doing while wearing her appearance would only make her look bad and probably end up getting her fired.

Good thing there wasn't anyone around to see him use his Sharingan...

In Louise's room, Itachi had to send a new shadow clone to take the first one's place, though the information he obtained from that fop of a noble had made using his Tsukiyomi (And subsequent exhaustion) sooo worth it, they would probably find the man's body later, coincidentally in a lake or some other large body of water after the man's apparent suicide. The Uchiha would have giggled maniacally had he actually been of that mental temperament, so in lieu of that the man only let out a dry chuckle. There were so many delightful rumors from the man, a court messenger by profession and it was all he could do not to try and sort out how to use the information he'd obtained. It was strange that Count Mott was as corrupt as he was and had as much dirt on as many nobles as he did. Though, given how many corrupt nobles there were in court it was highly likely he had learned of their treachery though double dealings of his own and selling information to Tristain's enemies. Truly the man was scum of the worst sort, scum bad enough that Konoha would actually take missions on as an act of charity.

And finally, the day before yesterday was a VERY interesting time for Louise and Itachi, mainly because it was time to test the young Vallière's magical ability. So, to keep accidental explosion damage to a minimum the two had moved outside the castle to one of the Senior testing grounds for those that tested high level magic's or potions that could affect large area's of land. It was something that Itachi wanted to do seeing as the last time Louise tapped into any large amount of power she had released an obscene amount of chakra and the last thing they needed was to accidentally blow up a part of the castle. (and by extension themselves.)

The first thing Itachi had Louise do was to cast a spell from her wand, as expected the spell was more of an explosion than anything else. Next, instead of having the girl cast it again, Itachi asked her if she could try and shrink or enlarge the explosions. At the girls affirmative nod Itachi had her doing just that, The girl willed the spells to be smaller, shrinking the magical ball of destruction down to the size of a basketball, then down to a cantaloupe and finally down to the size of a baseball. Hours later and she had the explosion to a manage able size now. Though she had complained that the size of the explosion wasn't that spectacular, to which Itachi had made a fair response back. A baseball sized explosion, while small was more powerful than most normal weapons a civilian could carry and the fist sized holes in the trees around the clearing attested to how powerful the ability actually was.

It also proved something to Itachi, namely that Louise wasn't overpowering her magic. She could control the size of the explosion so by extension she could control the explosion itself, so she had the control necessary for the fireball spell but it was simply her nature to make things explode which carried over to her magic.

Louise had been disheartened by that explanation but was quickly cheered up when Itachi clapped his hands together a couple times, proclaiming the ability something quite unique and special, had Louise been born in Konoha, there would be no end to the people trying to train her, it was always the odd ducks that had the most potential, just look at Gai for example. He had explained who the taijutsu expert was to Louise and called him something along the lines of 'fruitier than a fruit salad' but could easily take him on in pitched combat through sheer skill and ability.

Louise blushed even brighter at the praise from her teac- er- sensei.

That was something that Itachi had picked up on early on. The girl was proud, strong willed and had a temper the likes that was unseen if you pushed the right buttons but she also had a soft spot, a weakness in her defenses that would send the girl spiraling down into a deep depression. And the only remedy to that was constant complements to the girls ability, small encouragements that kept the girl focused on success rather than her minor failures.

The Uchiha knew the girls mentality had come from her constant put downs from the students and teachers, the constant failure's to use magic, and finally... her mother. Karin Désirée de La Vallière. A name that put the fear of death in the young girl every time she brought it up. The first time had been during her practice of the Bunshin. He had finally weaseled (every pun intended) the information out of her and it had frankly disturbed the man.

Karin treated her daughter like the Hokage would have treated him during his Anbu Captain days. The Duchess' social life with her daughters, all three of them mind you, was purely professional, like she never came out of her soldier mentality. Louise had called it the 'Rule of Steel.' and it was what Karin lived her life under, every waking moment and most of the time she spent asleep was completely devoted to everything she put her mind to one hundred percent. To her there were no losses, only minor setbacks and if something set her back too far it would be repurposed... or discarded.

That was what Louise was afraid of, being turned into marriage stock for some pompous jackass or even worse, to be completely disowned from her family. She would be dishonored and thrown out on the street, if she was lucky she'd be given a spare set of clothing and some money to at least ensure she survived to leave the family's lands.

Coming from the Uchiha Clan that kind of thing was par for the course, you fail, you were punished. Fail enough and you were no longer worth the effort, it was why the Uchiha were considered the most powerful clan in Konoha before he had massacred them all. It wasn't the money or the land, which they had by the jutsu load regardless. No, it was the mentality, the drive of an Uchiha that set them apart, it was also what set him apart as well. He was always soft hearted, too soft hearted to really be a ninja in a ninja world. He had often cried silently in his sleep, keeping the stony mask of indifference on his face even as tears fell. The hardest times in his life had been his first four major kills: man, woman, girl, boy... they had each haunted him until his final days in Konoha, when he had taken the life of almost every Uchiha in the world.

Then he had something else to haunt his conscience.

Louise... Louise however was an innocent young girl, barely above a civilian in strength and it wasn't like this world was much better. He'd place winning bets on less than five percent of this worlds' Nobles in a pitched battle with a seasoned chunin, to have a woman who most embodied the tenants of the ANBU mothering a girl who barely qualified for a ninja? It made the peace loving man ill. It was no wonder the girl had confidence issues, the only reason she hadn't lashed out and tried to do gods knows what to him was because he had chosen to train her in his ninjutsu arts, something which gave her some measure of progress. To him it would have been a minor event, something he trained daily to achieve. To Louise it was like standing at the bottom of a large hill and just magically being transported half way up it after having sat at the bottom for her entire life. The elation the girl must have felt when she actually pulled off a decent bunshin must have made the girls heart skip a beat.

And that's what he was trying to do really. Positive reinforcement had always been the best motivator and this girl was in desperate need of it. Sure, he didn't lay it on thick but it was just enough to keep her going for longer than what she could have normally gone for. That was one thing he was going to instill in his two pupils though. If Louise lived her life under her mother's Rule of Steel, then it would be his job to temper her in the Will of Fire, to ensure she flexed under pressure, rather than break.

The first step of that was going over the proud history of his village, something he had done somewhat over the past few days, but in greater detail out here in the forest where no one was around. The wonder on the girls face at how powerful his village was made a small grin appear on his lips. It was nearly the same reaction that he had when he heard the same tale from the Hokage himself during his graduation class.

And he had passed on the history to Louise so that she could bask in the work of her predecessors. She might not have grown up in the village but any apprentice of a loyal Konoha Shinobi could call Konoha their home away from home at any point in time and she was learning techniques that had been passed down from teacher to student and on and on for generations.

The girl had been so inspired by his speech that she had taken to her training like a woman possessed, knowing that there were great mage's and ninja that had started off worse than her and yet had become greater than even Itachi in battle, using abilities they created through blood, sweat and tears to make themselves legends even now in this day and age long after they were dead and buried. So much was the girls vigor to succeed that she had completed all Itachi wanted her to do with her wand in half the time he'd expected. So, to keep the girl occupied until they could get back, Itachi began teaching her another of the basic three. Kawarimi, or the Replacement Technique.

Oh, it was so much fun watching Louise screw that technique up. It was one of his most favored techniques but it had also been his bane for the first few days of practice. The trick to the technique was keeping in mind all the things you could trade places with before you moved and that tended to throw people off when they tried the technique. If your mind wandered ever so slightly from your chosen replacement target you'd end up changing places with a random thing nearby, and that could end up bad for you when you trade places with a twig fifteen feet up in a tree.

Itachi had to make a quick save of the girl at least a half dozen times before she actually got the hang of the technique. The entire time back to the academy was devoted to learning the kawarimi and Louise showed a dab hand at it after she had finally gotten the hang of it.

Night came again and his two students were put through the gauntlet with their sealing knowledge, forming dozens of storage seals until they could make them perfectly. What's more, after the exhausting training , the three of them had found themselves in Louise's bed, too tired to really care that they were sleeping together. Even in the morning when they had woken up Louise hadn't said so much as a word, though she had blushed slightly when she realized that the two girls had cuddled up on either side of the Uchiha.

Siesta on the other hand was doing a fair impression of a tomato, though she seemed just as accepting of the circumstances as Louise had. Itachi had a sinking suspicion that it had to do with the fact that he was a tall handsome and powerful individual that had an air of complete and total confidence around him at all times. Or in other words the two were fangirlling over him... though it wasn't exactly fangirling seeing as the two had the decency not to squeal or try and force themselves on him, that was something the Uchiha thanked all the gods of the universe for, he didn't know if he could take both his students trying to grab his 'magic wand' every five minutes like the girls in Konoha used to try to do. That was something that liberal use of fire or Sharingan would have cured, too bad that fire would have killed them, and using the Sharingan on them would probably fry their brains, which was why he hadn't used it on Kirche yet, he may dislike the woman be he didn't dislike her enough to turn her brain into scrambled eggs.

That was (thankfully) yesterday, the most interesting day of the week in fact due to the events right after.

It was early morning right after they had awoken and found themselves in the same bed that they had a curious visit from Guiche de Gramont. When Itachi had opened the door the younger man had grown a shade paler than normal but had swallowed the phlegm that had appeared in his throat.

He had asked to speak to Louise. With a single raised eyebrow the Uchiha had called softly for Louise. When the girl had gotten to the door the young Gramont had gotten on his knees and bowed deeply to her, asking the girl for forgiveness for calling her Zero and for his disgracing the title of noble by childishly challenging Itachi to a duel. He then turned to Itachi and did the same for the Uchiha.

When the boy had gotten to his feet he had explained that he had done a lot of thinking over the past week or so since his defeat and had come to the conclusion that he had disgraced his family name that day. He had then pulled a diamond the size of Louise's fist out of his coat pocket and had presented it to the girl. At Louise's shocked and questioning look the boy had explained that the gem was a small token of apology beyond his initial one to show how sorry he was. The gem was something that he himself had found using his Familiar, Something he had sweat his pride and dignity to find so he could properly apologize for his actions.

Louise reached a hand out and took the thing in her hand. It was specialty cut and from what she could tell, recently cut as well. She didn't know if what Guiche said about finding it himself was true but honestly, no one had ever given her a gift before, even in apology. So this was a first for the Vallière's and something, despite the meaning behind it, that she would cherish as well.

Guiche stood then, and asked a question that rose the brows of both master and student as he asked Itachi if the man would train him how to fight.

Itachi had nearly chuckled at the idea of training the boy who had only just recently tried to kill him, but that was quickly squashed under the determined Gramont's gaze, something he had never expected from the pompous boy.

It was almost to the point where Guiche was about to beg on his knees when Itachi accepted, on the condition that work as hard or harder than his two other students.

Guiche almost broke his neck at how hard he agreed to the terms, though he was curious about who the other student Itachi had taken under his wing, when the Uchiha pointed back into the room at Siesta, who was sitting at a table taking notes on Fuinjutsu, Guiche's jaw nearly hit the floor. Apparently he was just as surprised that one of the maids was learning from the ex ANBU captain. When the girl activated a storage seal that sucked up the desk she was writing on the Gramont had nearly soiled himself again in shock.

Itachi quickly remedied that situation by explaining that the powers of his people were available to all who had the proper training to use them, Siesta was just predisposed to it through all the hard work she'd gone through when she was younger, taking care of her eight brothers and sisters had helped strengthen her chakra coils, no matter how minuscule the amount and allowed her a larger than civilian level of chakra to do with what she wanted. She also had a decent grasp on more of the basic seals and was moving on to a few of the more difficult beginner seals. Apparently the girl was very skilled when it came to calligraphy, another skill she picked up from her great grandfather which allowed her to work with Fuinjutsu that would normally be difficult for a beginner.

Surprisingly Guiche took this in stride after the initial shock wore off and bowed respectfully to Itachi, then he took his leave, promising to be at the training ground Itachi specified after the Familiar's Fair a few days from now in order soon to learn from the Uchiha.

Which leads us to the next day, which was the current day and our current situation.

"Nonononononono, AARRRG!" Louise was frustrated and in a small amount of denial. Why? Well...

"Is this exhibition that important?" Itachi asked curiously.

"Of course it is!" Louise snapped, rubbing her hands through her hair angrily, mussing it up so that several strands hung over her face, taunting her into swatting the offending strands out of her face, only infuriating her more. "For any noble the Familiar Exhibition is the most important event in the school year. Court nobles from all over the country and a member of the royal family itself comes to judge the event."

"Hmmm." Itachi's lip twitched in thought as he watched the pacing girl. "Then it is similar to the Chunin exams? A time when you can show off your abilities to a higher echelon of nobility to raise your own status in the world?" Really that's all the Chunin exams were, to make yourself and your village look better to get more business, so grandstanding or finishing a match quickly and decisively during the third part of the exams was the quickest way to either garner attention or show off aptitude respectively, as long as both were positive attention of course.

"Yes." Louise barked back, getting a raised eyebrow from Itachi who had seen nothing but a dutiful student up until that point, he assumed it was the stress that was getting to the girl and wearing away at the positive reinforcement he had been building in her as her teacher, something he had to stop soon.

Itachi reached out and grabbed the girls cloak, which snapped taut and stopped the girl in her tracks. he held up a hand to stop the incoming tirade. "I don't see a problem, If you need to demonstrate your abilities then do so." It wasn't like the bunshin or basic seal work was that complicated, so showing it off a bit couldn't hurt.

"But that's not it." Louise wined. "This is the _Familiar Fair_, the whole point is for _you_ to show off, it lets others know that you're a good mage if you're able to summon a powerful familiar."

Oh... well that wasn't very ninja like. You usually try to hide most of your abilities when you practice the arts of the ninja... though, to be fair quite a few ninja were flamboyant enough to show off most of their techniques right from the get go, they just used those techniques so oddly that no one could pin down a way to beat them. Again he'd liken that bit of insight to Gai, as the man wasn't that silent when it came to fighting but he was just as nearly unstoppable as other A bordering S-Rank ninja. His little slip up with Amaterasu was an exception to the rule as that had been unintentional.

But, maybe a bit of showing off would be acceptable this time around... but what could he do that wouldn't give too much away, a ninja needed that air of mystery to remain as effective as they were. Itachi's hand absently fingered the covering to one of his kunai pouches strapped to his thigh, visible due to the fact that he had removed his Akatsuki cloak before going to sleep last night.

The hand stopped, caressing the pouch absently for a moment then an idea struck the Uchiha square on the head. He had shown off to Sasuke back when he was still a Konoha ninja, it was just basic Sharingan practice with kunai knives hitting a three hundred and sixty degree field of targets, even those hidden behind a tree. Something like that would be impressive for anyone watching and that was exactly what Louise wanted, something impressive. And then a shrewd little grin formed on the Uchiha's face as he took into account what Louise had been learning the past few days, yes he could work with this.

"I have an plan." Itachi said simply, standing up and pulling the girl behind him to their training grounds.

_**-A few minutes and one explanation later-**_

"No." Louise said with a tone of finality. "Hell No!" She reiterated vehemently in an unladylike fashion. "There is no way this will work and you'll end up killing me."

He raised an eyebrow. "You don't trust my skill?"

"It's not your skill I'm worried about." She snapped back.

"Then it's your skill you're afraid of?" Flinch, averted eyes, blushing cheeks. Yep, she was being self conscious again. "Louise." Itachi spoke evenly, getting the girl to snap to attention. A hand plopped down on the girls head and rubbed it gently. "You are not a failure, despite what your classmates might think. If you want my opinion I can honestly say that you're moving through your studies and training at pace that would give most prodigies pause." The girl again blushed at the compliment, Itachi resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"You are not physically required to be present for the competition, a simple bunshin can take your place if you wish."

"N-no..." Louise shook her head. "The princess herself is going to be there and..." she took a deep shuddering breath. "I... I need this."

Itachi nodded. "Very well." Another pat to the head got the pinkette back into position as the two went over their routine.

_**-ooo-**_

After an evening of practice, Louise felt reasonably comfortable with what Itachi had planned, they had even had a mock performance a couple of times to get into proper sync. Louise had been genuinely amazed at what Itachi could do simply by using his Sharingan and a bit of skill.

Night had fallen quickly, bringing with it a surprise not only for Louise and Itachi, but most of the staff of the school as well. The Princess had arrived early in a carriage pulled by unicorns and surrounded on all sides by her honor guard.

Before Itachi could get a good look at the woman she, along with her retainers had already moved on inside and away from view, apparently she didn't want to draw too much attention to herself... an endeavor she failed at completely since she... well... she did arrive in a carriage _pulled_ by _unicorns_ that doesn't speak well of tact or stealth.

Speaking of tact and stealth, the princess was doing a terrible job of it as she snuck through the halls of the castle, stopping in front of Louise's door and was prepared to knock on it when Itachi opened the door for her. It was really something of an insult to the shinobi when you were that blatant trying to sneak around, hell he had heard her coming up the stairs all the way down the hall. And he _knew _it was the princess, not only was the sound of her foot falls the same as the figure that had ducked into the castle the same (The woman's shoes made a very distinct sound on stone), but her cloak, at least the one she had used to sneak into the castle had remained the same, so it was _painfully _obvious who this was. Now he only needed to find out the reason for her visit.

"Princess."Itachi greeted her quietly, the woman freezing up underneath her cloak.

"Was I that obvious?" She asked sheepishly, somewhat hesitant to move past the man into Louise's room. "Is Louise in?"

"Hn." Itachi nodded, stepping to the side to allow the woman in, careful to keep within a few feet of the woman in case she attempted to harm Louise in some way, it was unlikely but not impossible.

"Louise Francoise!" The princess all but ran into the room to leap into the arms of her dearest childhood friend and nearly crush the life out of her in a tight hug.

A dearest childhood friend who's eyes had grown to the size of saucers and was gaping like a beached fish. "P-princess!?" The girl practically threw herself from the royal's arms and knelt at her feet. "This is too humble a room to be blessed with your presence."

"You don't have to be so formal Louise." The woman smiled warmly. "We've been friends since we were children after all."

"..." Itachi stood back and let the melodrama unfold, it wasn't his place to intrude upon the touching moment so he just leaned back against one of the walls of the room and let the two women catch up.

"Oh, and who is this? Your lover?"

Well he would have let them had the princess not decided to have her head in the gutter...

"He is not!' Louise all but screamed, a luminescent blush on her cheeks. "Princess, this is my familiar."

The Princess' smile brightened considerably. "Oh, hello Sir Familiar, I am Henrietta de Tristain, Crown princess of Tristain and I'm happy that you've been taking care of Louise."

"Itachi Uchiha, Head of the Uchiha clan (Technically, since he was the oldest living loyal Uchiha) and ANBU Captain" (Also technically since he never truly defected from Konoha) Henrietta didn't need to know that those titles were mere formality now that he wasn't on his own world.

"Oh my." Henrietta smiled, bringing a hand to her lips. "Are you perhaps a noble, Sir Itachi?"

Itachi shook his head quickly to put those thoughts to rest. "In a way, I am but not in the way you are assuming. My people put physical ability above social standing so the title of noble is merely a formality."

The princess' eyebrows rose in surprise at the casual denial, the thought that a society could survive without noble rule was a foreign concept to her, but not something that she would ignorantly dismiss as each culture had it's own ways, Itachi's was just ass backwards to her. "I see...It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance." She turned back to Louise and the two started chatting about what they had been doing since their last meeting, which sad to say had been quite a few years. Itachi did notice that Louise's smile was more... true, when she was talking with the Princess, it strangely made the Uchiha happy to see the girl he'd been training with a genuine smile on her face for once, it wasn't forced, it was just a normal smile.

Normal. Heh, it's strange that normality would be so fulfilling, but Louise cherished the princess whether she knew she did or not and that was more than enough to keep Itachi quiet and just enjoy the girls' idle chatter.

_**-ooo-**_

Pale moonlight shone down on a small clearing in a forest outside the Tristain academy of magic. (Well at least some form of moonlight seeing as there were two moon's of differing color.) The glow illuminated the smiling visage of a person, that person was Fouquet of the Crumbling Earth, also known as Miss Logueville, the secretary of Old Osmond and a triangle class earth mage of substantial power and ability.

She was also a thief of great renown, known for breaking into the greatest of defenses and taking the most powerful and rare item from that targets collection. And now, Fouquet set her sights on the Academy's treasury and the rare valuables inside, specifically a weapon of great power known as the staff of destruction. Her hand reached out and dropped the final stone into place, forming a large circle of regents to power one of her most powerful ability's: A Giant Stone Golem.

It had taken months to find the regents necessary for this magic to work, but she had finally prepared the spell. Just in time for the Familiar Exhibition.

A small cruel smirk crossed the woman's hidden face as she hid the circle from view via earth magic. The pieces were in place, now all she had to do was wait.

"You will be mine, O Staff of Destruction." The smirk on her face turned playful as she disappeared into the night. "And there isn't anyone who can stop me."

_**-ooo-**_

Itachi rubbed a small part of his sleeve along his nose after having just sneezed quietly into the garment. The Princess had left not long ago and Siesta was busy with Martueu helping with the preparations for the Familiar Exhibition tomorrow so he couldn't train her. Louise... Louise was just too tired from her earlier training to really practice sealing.

So the girl went to bed early, now that wouldn't have been a problem had she not fallen asleep in his lap, which she had found herself in while he was showing her a small chakra exercise to relax her mind and body. It was really to calm the girls nerve's for tomorrow, since as soon as the Princess left Louise's anxiety shot through the roof. It seemed that the girl was only relaxed as long as someone she trusted was close by.

She trusted Itachi for the most part, so she had parked herself as close to him as possible to calm her nerves and then Itachi compounded the problem by showing her the exercise.

And now he had to deal with this...

The Uchiha sighed. Well, it wasn't so bad, she wasn't loud when she was sleeping, a trait he had to deal with on occasion during their training when the girl got particularly pissed at something. He could even say she was kind of cute all curled up into him like she was.

A small chuckle escaped the man as he brushed an errant strand of hair from Louise's face, revealing the pouty expression the girl wore while she slumbered. She really did look like a little kitten curled up in his lap. Oh well, Itachi leaned back against the headboard, it would be an odd posture to sleep in, but that didn't mean that Itachi couldn't relax, with the feeling of another human body so close to him.

So close and so familiar, it reminded him of how Sasuke used to do something similar while they were still children, while everything had been so simple. Itachi feel asleep that night and slept better than had in years.

Louise shifted as she felt Itachi move, her head resting on his inner thigh as her body pressed into his, it was safe, warm and above all comforting, like all her problems could just wash away. Louise fell asleep that night and slept better than she had in years

Both of them slept deeply.

Both of them dreamed.

Itachi dreamed of wildflowers in a field, following along behind his sister cattleya and picking small bouquet's to give to his knight in shining armor, the man who would sweep him off his feet and make all his troubles with magic just go away, to just feel secure.

Louise dreamed of a forest, trees so tall that they would rival that of the holy land's graceful giants. She leapt from tree to tree, leading her brother Sasuke on a merry chase through the forest, temporarily forgetting that her family were traitors, that she might actually have to kill them. Those thoughts disappeared in the wild adrenaline rush as she kept one step ahead of the younger Uchiha following her. She feared for the future, of how alone she might be. All she wanted was peace, to be able to put down her sword and just live.

Their dreams continued on uninterrupted well into the night.

_**-ooo-**_

_**I won't lie, I actually liked this chapter a lot for some reason, despite the pain in the ass that it kind of was. **_

_**hope you enjoyed the chapter too.**_

_**Peace.**_


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